20th-century Designer Quotes

Mikhail Kalashnikov

H. R. Giger

Gianni Versace

Howard H. Aiken

Shigeru Miyamoto

Gary Gygax

Jonathan Ive

For me, elegance is not to pass unnoticed but to get to the very soul of what one is.

Christian Lacroix

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing.

Twenty years on many celebrities have come to love and wear my designs, and the thrill is still there for me after all this time.

Giuseppe Zanotti

This project started nearly twenty years ago as an assignment in my typography class at art school. Students were encouraged to see letters beyond their dull, practical functionality. We played with their unique shapes and tinkered with their infinite possibilities. The challenge was hard, so the reward of cracking a word felt great. This became a lifelong project for me.

I have never met a designer who was retained to keep things the same as they were

George Nelson (designer)

Some kids spent their allowance going to see 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'; I spent mine on a great-looking lamp I'd found at the flea market and a ceramic bowl from a neighborhood garage sale.

What's the number-one thing people do on the Web? They read. Words and numbers are the raw material from which the vast majority of webpages are built. If reading is the primary activity on the Web, then readability is a primary function of Web design.

It's a time to stop, honor and reflect on the abundance, prosperity, people and lives we are blessed with.

Sandra Magsamen

For something to endure, it must be unique yet so universal anyone can appreciate it. The one thing that is universal is the search for purpose. It is the essence of the human spirit to seek a reason for being. This is why functional designs are so beautiful, so calming. Of course, timeless design is wasted if it cannot survive. This is why we race and test our cars so hard. Creating something that time cannot erode, something which ignores time, both physically and in concept. This is the ultimate victory.

Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche

Good design must be honest. I enjoy making things better, because somehow I am always making them for myself, as well.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

Elegance and comfort are not incompatible, and whoever maintains the contrary simply doesn't know what he's talking about

Salvatore Ferragamo

An audience is perhaps unnecessary to the soul-searching mystic, but it is vital to the magician, the maker of prodigies.

Domenico Gnoli (painter)

I'd made a family friendly game about a beaver before this, but when I tried to put it online it got torn apart by a few prominent reviewers. People said that the main character looked like a scary animatronic animal. I was heartbroken and was ready to give up on game-making. Then one night something just snapped in me, and I thought to myself- I bet I can make something a lot scarier than that..

Here to create an environment of love, live with passion, and make our most exciting dreams come true

Today's president, CEO or managing director needs to be a disruptive influence with imagination, vision, and courage to lead the organization into new and dangerous territory. The leader must be an entrepreneurial driver who can inspire the team to boldly venture into uncharted lands.

Paul Sloane (author)

All women are goddesses, and it's just a matter of letting that goddess-power shine - and if you don't try to be the biggest and baddest damn goddess you can be, you are selling yourself short.

Kimora Lee Simmons

Adults tend to repress their pleasure. Sad to say, I think we become adults only through disappointment, grief, and lies. So of course gradually we become tough, less sensitive.

Power comes with a price. It's a burden. It demands sacrifice.

Colours change: in the morning light, red shines out bright and clear and the blues merge into their surroundings, melting into the greens; but by the evening the reds loose their piquancy, embracing a quieter tone and shifting toward the blues in the rainbow. Yellow flowers remain bright, and white ones become luminous, shining like ghostly figures against a darkening green background.

The first thing to learn about the deep structure of modern design is that it is relation-seeking and pleasurably so.

There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.

Massimo Vignelli

Mathematics is found to be the special, necessary lens through which nature must be observed since nature is defined as being exactly a structure of mathematical entities and relations.

The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody would put a flagstick on top.

The pictures achieve something rarely articulated about the metaphysical state of swimming: The body, immersed, feels amplified, heavier and lighter at the same time. Weightless yet stronger.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard H. Aiken