Top 284 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Graphic Designers - Page 2

BE PURPOSEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN THE OPTIONS ARE NEARLY INFINITE.

A mystery is the most stimulating force in unleashing the imagination.

It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night. Like on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or may be it was even a good day. May be somebody won the lottery today.

I'm always conscious of the context, the history, the specific environment of anything that I design and what it is going to be operating within.

I'm most proud of the fact that I get to keep growing.

No, no, it's not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. and the universe doesn't. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see. like with parents who adore you blindly. and a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. and a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him over you. and even a pink-haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. the universe takes care of all its birds.

The photograph is not only a pictorial report; it is also a psychological report. It represents the feelings and point of view of the intelligence behind the camera.

The job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable... important to a public, that involves the public.

Outstanding past work in photography, and in fact in all the arts, is very important to today's photographers. But it should be used for inspiration and not for imitation. These works should be something to be built upon, not to be repeated.

Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.

I've never had a problem with a dumb client. There is no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it.

It is easier to talk than to listen. Pay attention to your clients, your users, your readers, and your friends. Your design will get better as you listen to other people.

They work now with computers for building buildings and books, but not ever with new ideas.

The personality and style of a photographer usually limits the type of subject with which he deals best. For example Cartier-Bresson is very interested in people and in travel; these things plus his precise feeling for geometrical relationships determine the type of pictures he takes best. What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think.

Design is an art of situations. Designers respond to a need, a problem, a circumstance, that arises in the world. The best work is produced in relation to interesting situations - an open-minded client, a good cause, or great content.

It's a vicious cycle. While systems become denser, their energy efficiency has decreased. Devices are getting smaller and smaller, but they are getting hotter.

Working within the constraints of a problem is part of the fun and challenge of design.

When you have something truthful to say, it will design itself.

One mistake does not define you.

I'm not even sure there is a clear distinction between "spirits" and "extra-terrestrials". At least I think extra-terrestrials may be able to slip in and out of, around and between dimensions, including the dimension we relate to as ours.

No matter how many times your amazing, absolutely brilliant work is rejected by the client, for whatever dopey, arbitrary reason, there is often another amazing, absolutely brilliant solution possible. Sometimes it's even better.

If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.

People think that digital language is a fixed language, but it's not: it's very fluid. It's like I'm doing a painting where the paint refuses to dry.

Middle School is about as bad as it gets, and then it gets better.

The grid is like the lines on a football field. You can play a great game in the grid or a lousy game. But the goal is to play a really fine game.

A printed work, which cannot be read, becomes a product without purpose.

Design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has.

Think more design less

The creation of all those symbols and logotypes which are an ever more striking feature of the world in which we live calls for a new and fresh approach to lettering in the part of the designer. In these logotypes the combination of letters can be more or less obvious; but only deliberately contrived encounters of elements and confrontations of values can lead beyond the letters to new forms of expression.

Without professionalism I'd be an amateur, and the clients I want don't hire amateurs.

Who we are? Us!Right? What kind of people are we? What kind of person are you? Isn't that the most important thing of all? Isn't that the kind of question we shloud be asking ourselves all the time? 'What kind of person am I?

It's a cliché, but typefaces are really just ingredients.

I think my strength in teaching and what I get a lot of good feedback on is going towards the students and asking them what they are about. It's about putting your own personality into the work.

Typomania is curable but not fatal. Unfortunately.

My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing.

Design exists to serve some purpose.

We live in a time of the greatest precision and of maximum contrasts: photomontage offers us a means to express this. It shows ideas: photography shows us objects.

We use the word typography to describe two different things: the design of letterforms, and the layout of typeset passages on a page. Both of those experiences are really important to communicating information, especially when that information involves complex ideas.

What is good today may be a cliche tomorrow.

You can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.

You need the confidence to fail in order to take risks in your work

Each typeface is a piece of history, like a chip in a mosaic that depicts the development of human communication. Each typeface is also a visual record of the person who created it - his skill as a designer, his philosophy as an artist, his feeling for... the details of each letter and the resulting impressions of an alphabet or a text line.

Counter the effects of culture (steering your design ideas) by going out and looking for new experiences.

We need practice solving problems.

If you see something you have seen before, don't click the shutter.

Target for example, is just a dot with a circle around it, that's all it is, so if you want a logo like Target, you don't need to hire a designer, you barely need to know how to operate a computer program, the logo may as well be anything.

I don't think of design as a job. I think of it as - and I hate to use this term for it - more of a calling. If you're just doing it because it's a nice job and you want to go home and do something else, then don't do it, because nobody needs what you're going to make.

These days, information is a commodity being sold. And designers-including the newly defined subset of information designers and information architects-have a responsible role to play. We are interpreters, not merely translators, between sender and receiver. What we say and how we say it makes a difference. If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design.

I'm very much a word person, so that's why typography for me is the obvious extension. It just makes my words visible.

As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between the past and the present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves.

Do work you love and are passionate about, look outside of the world of graphic design for inspiration.

It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend.

I find our society a bit noisy. I would like to contribute a little silence.

If you do not start with the idea, you are creating fine art - its personal, but it tends not to communicate.

Letters do love one another. However, due to their anatomical differences, some letters have a hard time achieving intimacy.

If you haven't read Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways you should be arrested for calling yourself a Designer

As we get older, a lot of societies, education systems and workplaces make us feel that playing is a waste of time. We end up suppressing stupidly brilliant questions for what we think are more serious responsibilities.

The difference between regulated architects and unregulated designers is, unlike buildings, letterheads don't fall down and kill people.

I had a lot of enthusiasms that were very contradictory, I was never very doctrinaire in the type of design I wanted to do.