50 Inspirational Quotes on the Art & Science of Design
Simple quotes can hold timeless and moving lessons. As designers, we’re lucky to have an exceptional pool of people who have spearheaded the industry over the years, crafting clever insights based on years of experience. Other contributors to this list aren’t designers at all, but have given an outsider’s fascinating insight into the world of design.
Our hope is that these quotes will hope you approach your workday with a sense of inspiration and focus on what you really want to achieve.
We want these quotes to help as many designers as possible, so if one of them really strikes you, make sure to tweet it to your designer friends!
1. James Randolph Adams
Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture – and forget that merchandise must be sold.
2. Milton Glaser
The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire and persistence.
3. Charles Eames
Design is an expression of the purpose, and it may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art; design depends largely on constraints and it is a method of action (there are always constraints and these usually include ethic).
4. Douglas Adams
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
5. Milton Glaser
To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.
6. John Maeda
If there were a prerequisite for the future successful digital creative, it would be the passion for discovery.
7. Kate Krebs
Waste is a design flaw.
8. Clement Mok
Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era – it’s a process that creates order out of chaos, that renders technology usable to business. Design means being good, not just looking good.
9. John D. Berry
Only when the design fails does it draw attention to itself; when it succeeds, it’s invisible.
10. Jorge Frascara
Good graphic design solutions to communication problems can improve the flow of information in society and, therefore, substantially and positively affect education, social well-being and the daily enjoyment of life. In addition, good graphic design solutions can also have a positive economic impact.
11. David Hockney
Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.
12. Scott Adams
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.
13. Freeman Thomas
Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.
14. Milton Glaser
There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.
15. Stanley Morrison
Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.
16. Jenaiha Woods
Design is the contrast of the core of limitations therefore there are no boundaries. It is simply an interpretation of creativity.
17. Jeffery Veen
Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organizing and manipulating of words and pictures.
18. Adrian Frutiger
If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page… When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.
19. Jan Tschichold
Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.
20. Massimo Vignelli
I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.
21. Zuzana Licko
The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read; their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read.
22. Adrian Frutiger
Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket. Helvetica is here to stay.
23. David Carson
If you have no intuitive sense of design, then call yourself an “information architect” and only use Helvetica.
24. Alexander Gelman
Any good typeface can be completely destroyed when misused or extensively overused. Helvetica seemed to sustain a beating like no other. Still fresh, still popular, Helvetica is king.
25. Paola Antonelli
Designers may be the true intellectuals of the future.
26. Erik Adigard
Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.
27. Steff Geissbuhler
I have never designed a logotype without first trying it in Helvetica. It is still the most versatile, classic and readable of all typefaces.
28. Michael Ian Kaye
What a graphic designer tries to do is make sure the typography is emotionally consistent with the brand.
29. Massimo Vignelli
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.
30. Roi James
Great design is all about details. With innovative material selection, sensible construction techniques and modern aesthetics one can craft a unique design language that sets a new standard.
31. Frederic W. Goudy
Anyone that would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep.
32. Eric Gill
There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.
33. Wolfgang Weingart
Berthold is still a good typeface, but even Berthold has some less than attractive features, and then I just cut them off because I didn’t like them.
34. Luke Wroblewski
Visual organization is the deliberate prioritization of meaning within a visual design. It’s the process of applying the principles behind perception – how we make sense of what we see – to illuminate relationships between content and actions.
35. Jeff I. Richards
Creative without strategy is called ‘art’. Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising’.
36. Serge Zuev
The original idea makes design distinctive, function makes it work and quality adds value.
37. Don Newgren
Design is intelligence made visible.
38. John Maeda
Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.
39. Paul Rand
It is no secret that the real world in which the designer functions is not the world of art, but the world of buying and selling.
40. Linda van Deursen
Grids do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in relation to the content. We never start with a grid. We start with an idea which is then translated into a form, a structure.
41. Steve Jobs
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
42. Richard Grefé
Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.
43. Nolan Bushnell
The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.
44. George Santayana
Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.
45. Hans Hofmann
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
46. Jon Franklin
Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance.
47. Edward R. Tufte
Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information.
48. C.W. Ceram
Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.
49. Jim Jarmusch
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.
50. Robin Mathew
Design is where science and art break even.
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Pretty Cool quotes
great post
Umm…if this article is based on great quotes why did you choose a font size so small to represent them?
yup, the font size too small
I agree.. I thought I was going MORE blind…
Yeah…
This post is about quotes. Not about names. Better switch the quotes and names.
I disagree,
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.”
Why complicate things?
Very interesting. Thanks.
I can’t see the pictures…
Design is the art of communication – Kumail.H.T
I just made that up but it doesn’t sound all that bad
i dont there is supposed to be pictures
Inspirational indeed, thanks for the list of quotes.
thanks!
Nice! This is my favorite art and tech quote.
Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.
- Daniel Bell
Very interesting and inspiring, thanks for nice post.
the 33 and 48 th comment i like
i cant see the pictures!!!!
Great quotes. Something different than the usual you see on most design sites.
I like 14 & 25.
Graphic design is the visual lubricant for our consumer-driven society. Gosh damn, I love it.
My favorite, not here :
>> Less is more (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
Interesting Post, as far a content goes.
And for “Design”, I think this is somewhere on top amongs worst designed posts on PSDtits!!!!
The author names are way toooo big than the actual quote itself, the quote is hardly readable with author names shouting too harshly
i wonder if anyone of theses great, good designers have ever made a mistake that resulted that something had to be reprinted or something like that. i would be funny to hear their story.
we’ve all done it :/
Interesting Post, as far a content goes.
And for “Design”, I think this is somewhere on top amongs worst designed posts on PSDtuts!!!!
The author names are way toooo big than the actual quote itself, the quote is hardly readable with author names shouting too harshly
why i cant see the pictures???????????
There’s not supposed to be pictures here! (I don’t think)
Design is a combination of art, communication and expression with the element of functionality.
rather deep in shallow waters, hey!!!
Thanks for share…
Inspiring me a lot there…
My next 50 tweets will be quoters
nice colleaction
Woah! I have the same post scheduled next week. Sigh!
Hmmm that’s new.
Thank you for the quotes.
Some truly fantastic quotes there but sadly some are very long….Shakespeare once said ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’…I’m not syaing they’re bad but they could be smaller! Jus my 2 cents!
cant see pictures
hye scott?
#4!!!!! Douglas Adams is one of my favorites authors and that is one of my favorite quotes of all time! it’s amazing to see it on this site!!!!!
some really cool quotes. I like this one: Don Newgren: The original idea makes design distinctive, function makes it work and quality adds value.
I thought of one the other day, that i might use for my own company, or something along these lines.
“A designers success is only as good as their clients success”
what do you think?
“To arrive at true simplicity, one must travel a complicated road.” ~Dimi Arhontidis
super…I just love these quotes…
“Thanks for the post” ~Alan Ballard (2009)
i have one, well, it can works..jejjje:
“the brand is what define us, is the story we want to talk..”
“too bad, the images won’t load”
Sushimoron Alvarez (2009)
Way cool.
Perfect twitter material!
twitter.com/lessfame
Cool! This is one of my favorites!…Thanks!
trully optimist.
I will try to extract romanien qoutes by romanian designers.
uuu 50 next tweet xD !!!
Nice quotes. Like the one from Douglas Adams. But wouldn’t it have been nice to have some extra information about the authors of the quotes. Sometimes it makes more sense if you know who the author of a quote is.
Nice post
Here’s my quote:
Design is more important than food, unless you’re hungry
Nice post too, but I agree Andris, Would be better wiht some extra information about the authors…any way, google is our friend!!
Why’s everyone thinking there are pictures. Just bcoz these boxes hold pics normally don’t mean there are pics….anw..the quotes are too small….this article has been badly laid out…sry
“unexperienced designer steals shape, the experienced one steals concept”
and I forgot to memorize who said this -_-
btw, nice post, really refreshing
Good.
Very good.
Isn’t it interesting how great minds of different fields can think alike.
48. C.W. Ceram
Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.
Charles Mingus
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
beautiful quoutes