Designer Quotes

William Morris

Mikhail Kalashnikov

Edith Wharton

H. R. Giger

Gianni Versace

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Igor Sikorsky

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

Christian Lacroix

Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new font to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.

Stanley Morison

Writing is a process of discovery of what you really do know. You can't limit yourself in advance to what you know, because you don't know everything you know.

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 would have preferred to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example, a lawn-mower.

Mikhail Kalashnikov

The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten.

Throughout history, people have never before expected to be as comfortable as people do today.

I will do this. Nothing in my life matters except this. No moment of my life exists except this moment. I am born in this moment, and if I fail, I will die in this moment.

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

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche

Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. In other words, with games, learning is the drug.

Many foreigners have asked me how we made the Danish style. And I've answered that it...was rather a continuous process of purification, and for me of simplification, to cut down to the simplest possible elements of four legs, a seat and combined top rail and arm rest.

Sustainability is now a big baggy sack in which people throw all kinds of old ideas, hot air and dodgy activities in order to be able to greenwash their products and feel good.

In very other period of art history, the idea itself –the what – had been primary. Today the idea matters less than the way it is arrived at; it is the how that makes the work. This word brings us again face to face with the theme and its infinite variations. It is no longer a matter of knowing, of possessing the truth, but of approaching it... knowing that the road is long, knowing that the road does not end, knowing that the road is the end in itself.

It has to be well timed. It needs to have the right components that maybe contain emerging technologies or something like, say, when Doom came out — the Network play — there weren't many games like that. There was a really great 3D world that a lot of people hadn't seen. It was light-years ahead of Wolfenstein. It was shareware, so it had Internet distribution. We used the Internet to get it all over the place. So it used a lot of stuff that was just becoming popular at that time. id just capitalized on it.

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

Salvatore Ferragamo

Seeing well transforms mere existence into the art of living.

Alexandra Stoddard

Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious.

Andrew Jackson Downing

Don't wait for a plan to materialize. Don't expect perfection in your very first try. Just jump In. No idea is too big or small, it's just the mindset which matters. Life is short, startup now!

Poor dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic herbs, or green tea, or moldy books. Your forms are bent and flattened into every ugly and distorted shape.

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

George Nelson (designer)

The more I learnt about this cheeky – almost rebellious – company, the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had reason for being that wasn't just about making money.

I only included things that everybody likes, like violence, flowers, children, women, friendship and death.

Tomonobu Itagaki

All creative people hate mathematics. It's the most uncreative subject you can study.

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

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