Quotes on Graphic Design

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.

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

Designers may be the true intellectuals of the future.

The soul is often in the surface, and the importance of 'depth' is overestimated.

I have solved what color is, however ; I still have no idea about what line is.

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.

Beauty is the brilliance of truth.

Innovation comes ultimately from a diversity of perspectives. So when you combine ideas from different industries or different cultures, that's when you have the best sense of developing groundbreaking ideas.

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people.

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I’m interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are.

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.

If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.

Luck is the residue of design.

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.