Good design should be available to everyone - and I do mean everyone. What I spent on the wheelchair I'm in could buy a small Mercedes. It's not only unfair to me; it's unfair to someone who's indigent but has the same needs. My goal is to make all objects affordable.
Interpretation
Good design should be accessible and affordable to everyone, regardless of their financial situation.
In this quote, Michael Graves emphasizes the importance of making quality design accessible to all individuals, particularly those with disabilities. He points out the disparity between high prices of essential items and the financial constraints many people face, advocating for a commitment to affordability in design to ensure that everyone can benefit from well-designed products.
In practice
This quote can be used during a presentation about inclusive design practices.
Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.
We've taken on health care in a big way in our office, ever since nine years ago when I was paralyzed. I was in eight different hospitals, three different rehab centers, and all the rooms were dreadful. As an architect, designer, and patient, I can do something to help.
Instead of using the machine as a metaphor for architecture, as Le Corbusier did, I use the human body. I want the public to know that it's them I'm designing for.
I believe well-designed places and objects can actually improve healing, while poor design can inhibit it.
The role of designers and product makers is to really become much better editors. What kind of functionality is actually needed - and truly delightful - to consumers? Remove all the extraneous stuff.
Things which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different.
Design cannot rescue failed content.
Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.
Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.
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