Design Quotes - Page 3

We interrogate the world by making.

So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. (38)

You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.

Products shouldn’t just work well, they must unfold well.

Designer of information superhighways need to take the occasional stroll down memory lane.

For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209)

In geometry, as in nature, the circle is the archetypal shape of wholeness and inclusion. It is an effective shape for nonprofits or community-focused efforts.

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

Brand and product don’t compete. Brand is product, and everything else conforming to the unique story that consumers create when they think of you.

Your life success is well designed by the mental transformation you experience. That mental transformation guides you to construct powerful decisions. You can't live life so well without mental make-ups.

Design a life! Don't maintain it.

BREAKING NEWS: You're awesome and designed for success live this day accordingly!

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

The present and the future are about sense-making, about what we as humans value.

Design is not really a way for me to express myself. Design is a product that we produce for a client.

Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.

Often we don’t see the majesty of God’s design because we’re caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs.

By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.

We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.

The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God’s many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.

Think of the billions of trillions of snowflakes, and the billions of trillions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in every single one of them. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, who wrote the laws for the wind and the rain, the snow and the dew? I’ve tried to work it out, but it makes my head spin.

Don't die with the music on your tongue unsung!Don't die with the apps in your mind undesigned!Don't die with the books in your head unpublished!Don't die with the sermons in your heart unpreached!Live well and die well!

Ask one question: Would a Millennial (anyone born between 1980 and 2000) look forward to working here?Try this exercise. Take a group of people into a large, open room with tackable wall surfaces or whiteboards. Give them large sheets of paper, sticky notes, markers, and tape. Ask them to create a concept for a work environment (don't say “office”) using the following words: high-energy, collaborative, healthy, productive, engaging, innovative, interactive, high-tech, and regenerating.

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.

Every day as I wave to my children when I drop them off at school, or let one of them have a new experience—like crossing the street without holding my hand—I experience the struggle between love and non-attachment. It is hard to bear—the extreme love of one’s child and the thought that ultimately the child belongs to the world. There is this horrible design flaw—children are supposed to grow up and away from you; and one of you will die first.

Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.

Copywriting is a design muse, it carves a beautiful masterpiece in an imaginative way.

Lean brands are the result of continually testing assumptions.

Or was that fatalism another good move in design space? Did the universe evolve eyes and wings and sense organs and bitter amusement at the prospect of death all the same way?

Eventually everything connects — people, ideas, objects...the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se...I don't believe in this 'gifted few' concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.

Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.

Simplicity is all but nothing that's there.

With an architect as your guide, you canresponsibly stop worrying about what spacessomeone else might want in a house and focus only on those things your house should include.

Your brand story’s “happily ever after” involves open wallets.

Theory is relevant to you because it shows you a new, simpler, and more elegant side of computers, which we normally consider to be complicated machines. The best computer designs and applications are conceived with elegance in mind. A theoretical course can heighten your aesthetic sense and help you build more beautiful systems.

The roses started him thinking, how the oddity of them was beautiful and how that oddity was contrived to give them value. “It just struck me – clear and complete all at once – no long figuring about it.” He realized that children could be designed. “And I thought to myself, now that would a rose garden worthy of a man’s interest.”We children would smile and hug him and he would grin around at us and send the twins for a pot of cocoa from the drink wagon and me for a bag of popcorn because the red-haired girls would just throw it out when they finished closing the concession anyway. And we would all be cozy in the warm booth of the van, eating popcorn and drinking cocoa and feeling like Papa’s roses.

Take the expansion rate of the universe, which is fine-tuned to one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That is, if it were changed by one part in either direction--a little faster, a little slower--we could not have a universe that would be capable of supporting life. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~

Each artwork requires its own design

The Fibonacci Sequence turns out to be the key to understanding how nature designs... and is... a part of the same ubiquitous music of the spheres that builds harmony into atoms, molecules, crystals, shells, suns and galaxies and makes the Universe sing.

Don't rush to design your face to look beautiful, attractive and charming. Rather, be quicker to decorate your mind to appear as goal-oriented, passion-embedded and action-driven.

If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.

To design the future effectively, you must first let go of your past.

design is so important because chaos is so hard

Our head is designed to broaden our capability of analyzing facts, events and draw the right conclusions

Beauty of office, is profession in place

There's a fine line between minimalism and not trying very hard.

Positioning is finding the right parking space inside the consumer’s mind and going for it before someone else takes it.

Strip your website down to the basics and do a few things really well.

We’ve all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that’s been my life. I’ve always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently.

The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.

What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison...

Our critics make us strong!Our fears make us bold!Our haters make us wise!Our foes make us active!Our obstacles make us passionate!Our losses make us wealthy!Our disappointments make us appointed!Our unseen treasures give us aknown peace!Whatever is designed against us will work for us!

Your style guide is your most loyal brand protector.

When we all play our part the world will run as designed. Do your part and do it now!

I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.

Make sure you test your brand story’s recipe with whomever you’re cooking it for.