John Maeda Quotes

I have a confession: I'm not a man of simplicity. I spent my entire early career making complex stuff. Lots of complex stuff.

Design is about crafting an experience that is unfamiliar enough to feel novel, yet familiar enough to instill confidence.

We seem to forget that innovation doesn't just come from equations or new kinds of chemicals, it comes from a human place. Innovation in the sciences is always linked in some way, either directly or indirectly, to a human experience.

Art is a conduit toward human needs and perception,

All artists yearn to struggle, when they struggle they know they're alive.

The problem isn't how to make the world more technological. It's about how to make the world more humane again.

Our economy is built upon convergent thinkers, people that execute things, get them done. But artists and designers are divergent thinkers: they expand the horizon of possibilities.

Good problem-seekers are in higher demand than good problem-solvers.

Work is easier when its just work; it's much harder when you actually care.

A book is a human-powered film projector (complete with feature film) that advances at a speed fully customized to the viewer's mood or fancy. This rare harmony between object and user arises from the minimal skills required to manipulate a bound sequence of pages. Each piece of paper embodies a corresponding instant of time which remains frozen until liberated by the
act of turning a page.

Communication in every which way is everything for the leader.

Although data can make a compelling case for something, data rarely create the emotions needed to spur people into action

Growing up, I found I was good at two things: Art and Math. To hear my parents say it, though, it was only, 'John is good at Math.'

Apple products aren't simple technologies by any stretch, but there is a beautiful simplicity to them.

How do we slow down what matters the most and speed up what benefits change and progress? We don't want to impede progress, but we are seeking reconnection to ourselves, to each other, and with the world.

Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of 'I can' than 'I should' Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That's 'I can' thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device focus on what we should be doing, not just what we can.

When you're younger, think less and do more; when you're older, do less and think more.

I don't really love computers.

My role is to find strategic insights as to where design can have the most business impact. A designer can bring a viewpoint of not just aesthetics, but economics and usage.

If you have no fear, no one has power over you.

Knowledge is comfort, and comfort lies at the heart of simplicity.

Technology makes possibilities. Design makes solutions. Art makes questions. Leadership makes actions.

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

Artists change how we see the world - and that can have value in the way people do business.

Think of the computer as a spiritual space for thinking.

Teaching is the rare profession where the customer isn't always right and needs to be told so appropriately.

I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn't have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn't have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.

I don't like creating software anymore. It's too exact. It's like karate; there's no room for error.

Videogames are indeed design: They're sophisticated virtual machines that echo the mechanical systems inside cars.

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

There is a construct in computer programming called 'the infinite loop' which enables a computer to do what no other physical machine can do - to operate in perpetuity without tiring. In the same way it doesn't know exhaustion, it doesn't know when it's wrong and it can keep doing the wrong thing over and over without tiring.

If there were a prerequisite for the future successful digital creative, it would be the passion for discovery.

As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively - especially when they are well-designed.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.

Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.

The difference between closing or opening your eyes is the choice between the imagined vs real. Blinking is only human.

Corporations today, by their razor sharp focus on the 'bottom line' and quarterly earnings, have lost their ability to innovate.

What's next for technology and design? A lot less thinking about technology for technology's sake, and a lot more thinking about design. Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art and design will rise in importance during this century as we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital technology now affords.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Things that I can do myself, I either do by myself, or teach a willing undergraduate who doesn't know how to do those things by doing it for me. Things that I can't do myself, my graduate students should be doing.

If you are going to have less things, they have to be great things.

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

I've come to realize, however, that while technology may make it more convenient to communicate, it doesn't improve our ability to get a point across.