Some Great Design Quotes
Dec 29 2008
I love quotes! And no, I don’t mean an estimate for how much your time will cost (sorry, lame joke). Here are a handful of design related quotes that I’m digging right now, in no particular order:
“Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.”
—Erik Adigard“Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can’t invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.”
—D. H. Lawrence“Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.”
—Freeman Thomas“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”
—Dr. Edwin Land“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose”
—Charles Eames“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
—Charles Eames“Letters are things, not pictures of things.”
—Eric Gill“Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
—Steve Jobs“The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture.”
—Jeff Smith“You don’t have to please everyone—you have to please the user.”
—Brenda Laurel
And finally, this last one is so funny:
“Design is easy. All you do is stare at the screen until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
—Marty Neumeier (paraphrasing Gene Fowler)
Anyone have any other faves? What about development specific quotes?
Posted by Verity at 4:52 PM
Published in Culture, Design, Inspiration on Monday, December 29th, 2008
Tags: quotes



December 30th, 2008 at 11:11 am
“It cost a lot of money to look this cheap”
- Dolly Parton
December 30th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Great list! Here’s another funny one:
“There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’.”
– Edward Tufte
And a couple programming quotes:
“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.”
– Tom Cargill
“First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack.”
– George Carrette
:)