Design Quotes

Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. (38)

~ Michael Shermer

Often we don’t see the majesty of God’s design because we’re caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Design is an art, creative artist must have a beautiful mind

~ Bhupesh B. Patil

I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.

~ Criss Jami

Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.

~ Peter Stanyer

The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.

~ Steven Johnson

And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people’s lives just by doing our job a little better?

~ Steve Krug

Ask one question: Would a Millennial (anyone born between 1980 and 2000) look forward to working here?Try this exercise. Take a group of people into a large, open room with tackable wall surfaces or whiteboards. Give them large sheets of paper, sticky notes, markers, and tape. Ask them to create a concept for a work environment (don't say “office”) using the following words: high-energy, collaborative, healthy, productive, engaging, innovative, interactive, high-tech, and regenerating.

~ Rex Miller Sr.

Sometimes the most complex problems can be solved with the simplest solutions.

~ Bijan Shrestha

We’ve all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that’s been my life. I’ve always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently.

~ Andre Hueston Mack

Conjugation of the irregular verb “to design”:I create, You interfere, He gets in the way.We cooperate, You obstruct, They conspire.

~ David K. Brown

In School of One, students have daily playlists of their learning tasks that are attuned to each student's learning needs, based on that student's readiness and learning style. For example, Julia is way ahead of grade level in math and learns best in small groups, so her playlist might include three or four videos matched to her aptitude level, a thirty-minute one-on-one tutoring session with her teacher, and a small group activity in which she works on a math puzzle with three peers at similar aptitude levels. There are assessments built into each activity so that data can be fed back to the teacher to choose appropriate tasks for the next playlist.

~ Eric Ries

We interrogate the world by making.

~ Bill Bendyshe Burnett

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.

~ Leon Krier

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Beauty of office, is profession in place

~ Hicham Zinalabdin

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conversion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

~ Erika Hall

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conver- sion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

~ Erika Hall

aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.

~ Noah Kerner

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

~ Elon Musk

Designer turns daily common objects to sexy and interesting stuff but not necessarily functional.

~ Baris Gencel

One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.” (p.98)

~ Seth Godin

If I had to drink water like my cat, I’d croak over dead in no time. Maybe it’s like eating rice with chop sticks? Both are absurdly difficult and unfathomable for me. Not that I am into ‘ease’ (clearly a review of my life shouts otherwise), just some things obviously take time and talent I do not inherently possess. I move on to things I AM designed for!

~ Rhonda Louise Robbins

All of science is largely formalized common sense.

~ Nancy Pearcey

For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209)

~ Alain De Botton

All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.

~ Ralph Caplan

The late eighties was a good vintage. ID was not yet fashionable so a lot of people were doing it for the right reasons - to make good design, not become stars.

~ Leander Kahney

It may be necessary to change our brand, catch phrases, strategy, design, etc. once in awhile. It may give us competitive advantages. But a change that demands the change of the SOUL of who we're doesn't deserve to be entertained.

~ Assegid Habtewold

Your style guide is your most loyal brand protector.

~ Dane Brookes

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap.

~ Kate O'neill

The future will look futuristic only because we will be trying to make it look futuristic.

~ Anonymous

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

~ Ralph Caplan

The birds do not sing, clouds remain of rubber, glass, steel. A stone has lodged in the engine block, the process of rusting has begun. And then darkness, a cold wind, a shred of clothing fluttering where it is snagged on one of the doors which, quite unscathed, lies flat in the grass. And then daylight, changing temperature, a night of cold rain, the short-lived presence of a scavenging rodent. And despite all this chemistry of time, nothing has disturbed the essential integrity of our tableau of chaos, the point being that if design inevitably surrenders to debris, debris inevitably reveals its innate design.

~ John Hawkes

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

~ John Maeda

Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, 
and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

~ Dieter Rams

Simplicity is all but nothing that's there.

~ Shawn Lukas

Design a life! Don't maintain it.

~ Shannon L. Alder

In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent upon one other. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.

~ Jeremiah Burroughs

Our head is designed to broaden our capability of analyzing facts, events and draw the right conclusions

~ Sunday Adelaja

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

~ Eric S. Raymond