Design Quotes

A distinctive appearance and a simple set of characteristics lead to an extremely flexible brand. (pg. 38)

You can invoke neither time nor space nor matter not energy nor the laws of nature to explain the origin of the universe. General relativity points to the need for a cause that transcends those domains. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~

In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent upon one other. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.

Design is a fundamental human activity, relevant and useful to everyone. Anything humans create—be it product, communication or system—is a result of the process of making inspiration real. I believe in doing what works as circumstances change: quirky or unusual solutions are often good ones. Nature bends and so should we as appropriate. Nature is always right outside our door as a reference and touch point. We should use it far more than we do.

You seem to forget that the sun must set. You knew perfectly well that I would not be with you long enough. Still, you weep and cry and ask God ‘Why’ as if it were some kind of surprise. Why? Because love changes everything. Love’s the surprise.

You are the architect of your own future, so design your future with uncompromising sincerity.

The perfect orchestration of the symphony of life is one of the Creator's greatest and most beautiful miracles.

It may be necessary to change our brand, catch phrases, strategy, design, etc. once in awhile. It may give us competitive advantages. But a change that demands the change of the SOUL of who we're doesn't deserve to be entertained.

With making changes, the difficult part of trying to implement a new way, idea or thought, is getting people to believe the effect of your notion, and have them believe in themselves of adapting to something new.

V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.

A design can excel at one challenge only by compromising at others.

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap.

Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. " I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

If automating everything makes people lazier and lazier, and laziness leads to stupidity, which it does for most people, judging by the current content circulating the social networks everywhere, except North Korea, where they don’t have any internet to speak of - at some point the Japanese robots, for which a market niche is currently being developed, with no concerns on how they should be designed to act in society or outside it - will have no choice, but to take everything over, to preserve us from ourselves…

Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.

Some do not want to create rich experiences for others, others lack the ability to do so, but most just want to experience being rich, with little to no other experience.

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

Sylvia would have taken it seriously- so strong was her devotion to the innate intelligence of form. Those pretty tools like glue and pens, pasting together look-books – for Sylvia it would have been like toy making or arranging jewels. Unfortunately, Sylvia’s flair for design and graphics went unnoticed by the Mademoiselle staff, who had already pigeonholed her as a “writer”.

Your need to feel significant will never be met, until you can conquer your fear and manage your focus.

Our Master puts the desire to procreate in us to be sure that we are fruitful and multiply. He knows how important animals are to the planet because most animals He allows to reproduce in great number. He put every one of us on the ark for a reason. Do you think it’s a mistake that dogs and cats have litters of 8, 9, 10 or more and people typically only have one or maybe two? It’s no mistake. It’s because God intends that there is more than enough four-legged love to go around.

When the image is new, the world is new.

You were born to journey in the direction of your purpose. Anything that halts your progress is contrary to your design.

I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life.

Sometimes time spent reinventing the wheel results in a revolutionary new rolling device. But sometimes it just amounts to time spent reinventing the wheel.

In reality, though, most of the time we don’t choose the best option—we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing.

People relate to people, and if your brand feels like people, they’ll relate to you, too.

It is ridiculous to lay down to people where a thing should stand, design everything for them from the lavatory pan to the ashtray. On the contrary, I like people to move their furniture so that it suits them (not me!), and it's quite natural (and I approve) when they bring the old pictures and mementos they have come to love into a new interior, irrespective of whether they are good taste or bad.

There are a lot of conventions, a vocabulary and a set of practices and assumptions that underlie most professional book design. Since design is important to the eventual success of your book whether you attempt to do it yourself or hire it out, it pays to know something about those conventions and assumptions. After all, we don’t want anything getting in the way of your communication with your readers. You’ve got a message for them, a story to tell, or ideas to spread. That’s what’s important.

I am a lifelong lover of form–content interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of detail, and my quest for visual elegance on each page has had countless repercussions on how I phrase my ideas. To some this may sound like the tail wagging the dog, but I think that attention to form improves anyone’s writing. I hope that reading this book not only is stimulating intellectually but also is a pleasant visual experience.

Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.

Simple is complicated.

God doesn't create imitations, so He designed you naturally. It’s ungratefulness to dream of putting on unnatural self. You have no right to fake God’s design!

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conver- sion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people’s lives just by doing our job a little better?

When typography is on point, words become images.

The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.

Modernism isn't a design ethos any more, it's an economy of scale, and a marketing tool to sell the ordinary as something special, the sexless as erotic. A technological device without a specific, personalized identity has a subtext: it asserts the value of instrumentality. Its design is a reflection of its role... The anonymity of these objects is part of what they are: interchangeable commodities whose uniqueness in so far as they possess any is created by what is done with them. Function is an identity. And that identity is something we are encouraged to incorporate into our perception of self, that anonymity is proposed as something to emulate. Whimsy and uniqueness are indulgences.

I simply can’t look into the heavens on a crisp starry night and somehow bring myself to believe that the gaping expanse that engulfs the whole of me is the product of chance happenstance. And neither can I believe that the gaping expanse that rests within me is anything less.

aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.

Do everything in your power to make customers go confidently in the direction of their purchase intention.

Everything and everyone represents at least one brand. Therefore, to brand or not to brand is not even a question.

Discover a purpose that gives you passion. Develop a plan that makes you persistent. Design a preparation and motivates you to optimize your potentials. Do it because you love it!

I faced people from all walks of business who fully disregarded design (though they were completely influenced by it). I also met fine artists who drowned in their own work and the dense creative universe in their minds.Then I met designers. And instantly fell in love. Let me tell you why.Designers are familiar with critiques. They not only tolerate them but actively look out for them. They honestly believe in iterations and learn to edit down their work. They embrace simplicity and create beauty based on requirements other than their own. Design education teaches you to run away from assumptions and to have the stomach to scrap your work often.I’m bringing this up because it’s time to bridge the gap between design and business.

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conversion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

Basic geometric shapes communicate universal qualities common to all cultures. Practical design integrates them appropriately.

Design is an art, creative artist must have a beautiful mind

In today’s saturated marketplace, you’ll go nowhere selling a “bunch of features.” We are in the business of disrupting the market with brands that matter.

Ladies, most of you have no idea how beautiful you are. Don't let mean words from an insecure soul blind you from the truth of your beauty. You are beautiful by design... just the way you are.

Consciously or not, we feel and internalize what the space tells us about how to work. When you walk into most offices, the space tells you that it's meant for a group of people to work alone. Closed-off desks sprout off of lonely hallways, and in a few obligatory conference rooms a huge table ensures that people are safely separated from one another.

It must be remembered that the forty hour work week until age sixty five was designed by governments and corporations and not the medical profession.

Research conquers doubt. It aligns everyone around the incontestable. Research is the key to clarity—in startups, enterprises, and life itself.

The future will look futuristic only because we will be trying to make it look futuristic.

Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live.

Designer turns daily common objects to sexy and interesting stuff but not necessarily functional.

Humans are often credited with having real foresight, in distinction to the rest of biology which does not. For example, Dawkins compares the 'blind watchmaker' of natural selection with the real human one. 'A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection . . . has no purpose in mind'.I think this distinction is wrong. There is no denying that the human watchmaker is different from the natural one. We humans, by virtue of having memes, can think about cogs, and wheels, and keeping time, in a way that animals cannot. Memes are the mind tools with which we do it. But what memetics shows us is that the processes underlying the two kinds of design are essentially the same. They are both evolutionary processes that give rise to design through selection, and in the process they produce what looks like foresight.

A creative design to everything demands a Time Keeper to exist. It was born out from the womb of primordial time!