Quotations about ‘design’ and ‘designing’
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It’s a big world out there, but if you study designers, and if you try to design
things, you will find yourself repeatedly bumping into some concepts, ideas,
approaches, and attitudes that are shared by many who are involved in the
same pursuits as you are.
Think about these quotations and see if they influence your thoughts about the
world of design.
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Less is more. (Mies van der Rohe)
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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)
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Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and
function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
(Frank Lloyd Wright)
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The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which
makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was
built. (Frank Lloyd Wright)
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When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only
how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong. (Richard Buckminster Fuller)
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How do I make a sculpture? I just remove everything from the block
of marble which is not necessary.(Michelangelo)
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A garden is made of light and sounds; the plants are
participants.(Roberto Burle Marx)
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ARCHITECTURE is the art of how to waste space.(Philip Johnson)
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Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a
chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an
environment in a city plan. (Eliel Saarinen)
A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through
measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be
unmeasurable. (Louis Kahn)
Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and
the aesthete unoffended. (Raymond Loewy)
Never Leave Well Enough Alone.(Raymond Loewy)
I don't design clothes, I design dreams. (Ralph Lauren)
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"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
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"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."- Emile
Zola (1840-1902)
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"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” (Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
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"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him
absolutely no good."- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
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Design is:
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A discipline that explores the dialogue between products, people, and contexts.
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A process that defines a solution to help people achieve their goals.
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An artifact produced as the result of solution definition
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Good, usable products never happen by chance. Rather, they are achieved
through design that is based on an understanding of the natural physical,
psychological, and emotional characteristics of human beings, their tasks and
work environment; the constraints of the technology; and creating an interactive
experience that best "fits" the context and enables the human users to be
successful.
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In design sometimes one plus one equals three.”
Josef Albers.
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Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive
science, human need and beauty to produce something.
Paola Antonelli, Museum of Modern Art
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It's not rocket science. It's social science ﾐ the science of understanding
people's needs and their unique relationship with art, literature, history,
music, work, philosophy, community, technology and psychology. The
act of design is structuring and creating that balance.
Clement Mok.
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In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s
the fabric of the curtains and sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the
meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that
ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer.
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"Design depends largely on constraints.’ Charles Eames
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“Design addresses itself to the need.” Charles Eames
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“What is design? A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best
accomplish a particular purpose.” Charles Eames
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"Ideas make design distinctive and identity, function,
aesthetics and value make design work.” Pentagram.
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“Beauty without depth is just decoration.”
Metadesign.
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“Design must seduce, shape, and perhaps more importantly, evoke emotional
response.” April Greiman
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The process is purposeful—designers give form to products, interiors, and visual
communications, and satisfy the functional, psychological, and aesthetic needs
of users.
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Design is systematic, as it involves the analysis of problems in our physical
environment, and the transformation of findings into appropriate and usable
solutions.
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Design is also creative, as designers must possess the expertise to create
compelling visual forms for products, spaces, and information systems, and to
advance applications of new technologies in our everyday lives.
Ohio State University, Department of Industrial, Interior, and Visual
Communication
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To America’s International Technology Education Association, design is “An
iterative decision-making process that produces plans by which resources are
converted into products or systems that meet human needs and wants or solve
problems.”
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To Guy Julier, author of the Thames & Hudson Dictionary of 20th Century
Design and Designers, design is “the creative invention of objects destined for
serial reproduction.”
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When asked, most people who are professionally involved in design say it is a
verb: something you do; a problem-solving, creative exploration process.
To Ron Arad, it is “the act of one imposing oneﾕs will on materials to perform a
function.”
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But the rise of the sophisticated consumer has seen the emergence of an
alternative meaning. When most people talk about design these days, they are
referring to stuff, not method. Sentences such as “I’m interested in design” and
“that’s a beautiful piece of design” are now widely understood to be referring to
the outcome of the process rather than the process itself.
To consumers, design is something they experience in the finished object.
• If you think it's expensive to hire a
professional to do the job, wait until you
hire an amateur. RED ADAIR
• Technology is the campfire around
which we tell our stories. LAURIE
ANDERSON
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People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It's not about
giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good
design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive
science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world
didn't know it was missing.
PAOLA ANTONELLI
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. E.
JEFFEREY CONKLIN & WILLIAM WEIL
• Chance favors the prepared mind.
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LOUIS PASTEUR