Design Quotes

“I'm a big believer in the emotion of design, and the message that's sent before somebody begins to read.”

David Carson

“Good design doesn't date.”

Harry Seidler

“Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.”

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

“As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.”

Norman Foster

“Everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place.”

Norman Foster

“Space is the breath of art.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

“Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.”

Le Corbusier

“A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.”

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in.”

Frank Gehry

“It's all in how you arrange the thing; the careful balance of the design is the motion.”

Andrew Wyeth

“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.”

David Hockney

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures.”

Tom Peters

“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.”

Freeman Dyson

“There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.”

Tony Hoare

“Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.”

Erma Bombeck

“The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.”

Frank Zappa

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.”

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

“Luck is the residue of design.”

Branch Rickey

“Simplicity is not the absence of clutter; it's about bringing order to complexity.”

Jony Ive

“Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”

Don Norman

“Don't make me think.”

Steve Krug

“If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”

Massimo Vignelli

“Design is one of the highest forms of human creative expression.”

Paola Antonelli