Massimo Vignelli Quotes

Men's clothing hasn't changed in 200 years, maybe a lapel gets a little wider or a tie gets narrower from time to time. But it's usually always the same. There is stupidity in men's fashion. But women know who they are. They can change. Clothing is seductive for women. They get different personas by buying new clothes. But men don't.

Almost all the great American graphic designers have used white space as the significant silence to better hear their message loud and clear.

Scale is a mental - you can say that a lounger has scale, a building has scale, or an object has scale, or a page, or whatever if it's just right. A scale is a relationship to the object and the space surrounding it. And that dialogue could be music, or it could be just noise. And that is why it is so important, the sense of scale.

I started to begin to be interested in architecture and design when I was 14 years old, which was pretty early in life. And then I would start to look at architectural magazines and I eventually went to the school of architecture too, but one of the things I learned very early is that an architect should be able to design anything from a spoon to the city.

You cannot play the piano by telling a pianist what to do, go a little more to the left or to the right. And the same is for the computer, really. You have to play yourself to get the most out of it.

Greed is really the religion of vulgarity.

The pencil you leave it there, and it's dead. It doesn't do anything and it doesn't move by itself. It doesn't offer anything; it's totally submissive to you.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.

Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.

Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.

In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.

You do design because you feel it inside; you have a moral issue to spread quality in our environment.

Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution.

If you paint a building shocking pink, that has no scale, it is just a huge mistake, but it's not in the scale of the city to have things like that. You know. So, not only because it's not appropriate, not only because it's offensive to the environment, I mean but among them also because that quantity of that color in the urban scale, is out of scale.

Design is not art. Design is utilitarian, art is not.

I grew up with a pencil. A pencil was my computer at the time and so drawing, drawing, drawing and the tools of drawing where the usual ones and eventually then you graduated from the tools when the work increases and you start to draw by freehand as precise as possible and as accurate as possible, and I was pretty good at that.

You can reach timelessness if you look for the essence of things and not the appearance. The appearance is transitory - the appearance is fashion, the appearance is trendiness - but the essence is timeless.

Most of the manufacturers they tend to design things to sell they are more interested in the money side than anything else.

Any color works if you push it to the extreme.

Middle management is a disease.

The only way to stay in fashion is never be in. If you are never in fashion, you are never out of fashion.

Designers take care of everything around us. Everything that is around us, this table, this chair, this lamp, this pen has been designed. All of these things, everything has been designed by somebody.

I'm not a designer, I'm a sifter. I can sift everything, all the time. My sift level lines keep shaking all the time for everything that is around.

You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.

A grid is like underwear, you wear it but it's not to be exposed.

Good design is ubiquitous and forever.

The first thing you need to make clear to a client is that you aren't there to answer his wants but to answer his needs.

The repercussion of ugliness is endless.

The scale relates to everything. The thickness of a pipe, the thickness of a leg of the furniture. Even color could have a scale.

If all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead!

Good design is a matter of discipline. It starts by looking at the problem and collecting all the available information about it. If you understand the problem, you have the solution. It's really more about logic than imagination.

It is better to starve than get a bad client.