Graphic Design Quotes

Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap, like a bad pizza menu. Not because they can't afford decent computers - these days you can knock up a professional CD cover on a pay-as-you-go mobile - but because anyone who's good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit, to be honest. If the BNP really were the greatest British party, they'd have the greatest British designer working for them - Jonathan Ive, perhaps, the man who designed the iPod. But they don't. They've got someone who tries to stab your eyes out with primary colours.
~ Charlie Brooker

Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate. ~ Paul Rand

Paradoxically, minimalism is the maximum use of space. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In my book "Sound Unbound" we traced the guy who actually came up with the main concept for the graphic design of the record cover sleeve. His name is Alex Steinweiss. And one of the things in my book that we really tried to figure out was the revolution in graphic design that occurred when people put images on album covers. ~ DJ Spooky

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for. ~ Eric Carle

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work. ~ Bob Dylan

We tried to make the prosaic attractive without using the tired clichés of false glamour. You might say we tried to convey the attractiveness of reality, as opposed to the glitter of a never-never land.
- Cipe Pineles ~ John Clifford

Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses.
The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like. ~ Chip Kidd

If you can't make it good, make it big. ~ Michael Rowley

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended. ~ Raymond Loewy

Every society must be intentional about educating its leaders. ~ Patrick Awuah, Jr.

Graphic design was largely about communication in an artistic or creative manner, much like writing is used to convey ideas. Many designers completely miss that aspect of the "art." Some are completely satisfied with just making things pretty, without taking the communication element into consideration. ~ Jeff Fisher

For after all, a poster does more than simply
supply information on the goods it advertises;
it also reveals a society's state of mind ~ Armin Hofmann

Typefaces are to the written word what different dialects are to different languages. ~ Steven Heller

I graduated from school for graphic design, and I started to get into acting class just to get over severe fright. I was an extremely shy person. I could barely say hello to anybody. ~ Trevor Donovan

Mr. Spock : 'I began to study human behavior from an alien perspective, thinking, humans are interesting, sad, foolish, but worthy of study. ~ Leonard Nimoy

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

You have to be interested in culture to design for it. ~ Lorraine Wild

Do work you love and are passionate about, look outside of the world of graphic design for inspiration. ~ Jessica Walsh

I'm an artist, so I love the graphic design of Instagram. ~ Pierce Brosnan

Creativity is an ode to life. It is not a form of entertainment. It is a form of joy. ~ Wynn Bullock

Inner beauty is for amateurs. ~ Anne Taintor

Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out - a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's ... makin' ART. ~ Chip Kidd

Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye. ~ Jessica Helfand

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat
patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well
the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell."
Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot
death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings
a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater. ~ Arundhati Roy

Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact. ~ Michael Bierut

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. ~ Massimo Vignelli

Visual communication of any kind, whether persuasive or informative, from billboards to birth announcements, should be seen as the embodiment of form and function; the integration of the beautiful and useful." – Paul Rand ~ John Clifford

Graphic design is the spit and polish but not the shoe. ~ Ellen Lupton

The more uninteresting the letter, the more useful it is to the typographer. ~ Piet Zwart

So, I'm always around video games but I've always been interested in them from a visual perspective, with the graphic design and that whole thing. I don't know if that comes from my love of photography or what but that's always what's held my interest about them. ~ Sophia Bush

Symbols are oracular forms-mysterious patterns creating vortices in the substances of the invisible world. ~ Manly Hall

We are the Western World. We read, see, think. Left. To. Right. We can't help it.
..The problem with Top to Bottom is that it's unAmerican. We want to begin in the depths and climb our way upward. But our typographic system argues against this and wins, and images follow suit.
..What you have to be careful to remember about Big and Small, is that they can extend to infinity in either direction. Consider: Big can always be bigger and Small smaller. The atom is the Universe and vice versa. And they're both identical.
..Left to Right, Top to Bottom, Big and Small; on a two-dimensional plane, all of these tools rely on a relative truth. Now we come to In Front Of and In Back of, which for us are big, fat lies. Very useful though, and the first of many at your disposal. ~ Chip Kidd

It wasn't an architect or a designer who invented objects, but an artisan. ~ Giorgetto Giugiaro

I didn't think that personal style had much value in graphic design. ~ Stefan Sagmeister

3 requirements for a good designer: 1. genuine knowledge and love of great design. 2. sound knowledge of principles and techniques of communication. 3. heart (passion). ~ Lester Beall

I wear a lot of different hats - from writer to producer and artist. We all do 5 or 6 jobs, everything from creating our own graphic design to actually recording and the whole bit. ~ William Bell

In A Life In Books, author and graphic design visionary Warren Lehrer crafts a vivid kaleidoscopic odyssey that frames one man's life through not one, but one hundred different books - and book jackets ... An unmistakably modern evocation of the illuminated manuscript. ~ Jessica Helfand

Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. ~ Ellen Lupton

My overall artistic goal is to marry graphic design with comic books and traditional storytelling. ~ Jonathan Hickman

Typographical design should perform optically what the speaker creates through voice and gesture of his thoughts. ~ El Lissitzky

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. ~ John Maeda

Design is one of the few disciplines that is a science as well as an art. Effective, meaningful design requires intellectual, rational rigor along with the ability to elicit emotions and beliefs. Thus, designers must balance both the logic and lyricism of humanity every time they design something, a task that requires a singularly mysterious skill. ~ Debbie Millman

An image can only be one element in constructing a sequence of understanding. ~ Germano Facetti

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I'm interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are. ~ Tibor Kalman

Art is the only place you can do what you like. That's freedom. ~ Paula Rego

The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture. ~ Jeff Smith

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, is the buying and selling of product or service over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Electronic commerce draws on such technologies as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. ~ Webxtechnology

Graphic designers should be literate in graphic design history.
Being able to design well is not always enough. Knowing the roots
of design is necessary to avoid reinvention, no less inadvertent plagiarism. ~ Steven Heller

I wanted to study graphic design, because I wanted to work in an office with designer desks, ergonomic chairs, pool tables, and walls so colorful it looks like a flock of flamingoes exploded and splattered evenly from floor to ceiling. ~ Jarod Kintz

A distinctive appearance and a simple set of characteristics lead to an extremely flexible brand. (pg. 38) ~ Woodrow Phoenix

The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to 'tidy up' the mess, as opposed to understanding it's a 'day one' issue and part of everything. ~ Tom Peterson

Helvetica is good for typographers who do not know what to say. ~ Thomas Bohm

Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication. ~ Peter Bilak

Graphic Design, which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups, is not good design if it is irrelevant. ~ Paul Rand

Software developers come mainly from engineering and don't see how similar their industry has become to the one that produces magazines, newspapers, books, TV shows, and movies. Most software developers haven't yet learned to develop and follow strict standards for layout and graphic design and to pay as much attention to detail as traditional publishers and media studios do. As a result, graphic design and layout bloopers often get a "Who cares? It looks OK to me!" reaction from developers. ~ Jeff Johnson

If you jump, you best jump far. ~ Tori Amos

And graphic design elements and alterations are property of Bookbyte Digital and may be used as long as credit ~ Lewis Carroll

When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource. ~ Biz Stone

Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman. ~ Chip Kidd

When East meets West, amazing design happens. L'Alahambra rug is a marriage of the clean line and simplicity of Western graphic design meets the complexity and beauty of Eastern pattern. ~ Genevieve Gorder

If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients. ~ Michael Bierut

The Hewitt sisters were these amazing - both sort of philanthropists and dilettantes who went out and single-handedly collected all of these of-the-moment designs in wallpaper and textiles and in graphic design in order to teach people about design. ~ Jake Barton

Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take. ~ Chip Kidd

Never mistake legibility for communication. ~ David Carson

If you love something, the work will be just fine. ~ Herbert Matter

Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance. ~ Jon Franklin

The soul is often in the surface, and the importance of 'depth' is overestimated. ~ Italo Calvino

Graphic Design is the communication framework through which these messages about what the world is now, and what we should aspire to. It's the way they reach us. The designer has an enormous responsibility. Those are the people, you know, putting their wires into our heads ~ Rick Poynor

Typography is two-dimensional architecture, based on experience and imagination, and guided by rules and readability. ~ Hermann Zapf

Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century. ~ Chip Kidd

Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. ~ Shepard Fairey

The moment clients realize that revisions are not an all-you-can-eat buffet, suddenly they realize they are not hungry. ~ Lester Beall

I don't see myself as an artist. I work with artists and collaborate with them, but then it becomes graphic design. It's not an art. I'm a graphic designer. ~ Vaughan Oliver

She'd been lax in her responsibilities as the building owner because her tenants were her friends. Emmylou rented out the left half of the bottom floor space for her massage studio. Chaz rented the tiny center section for his various artistic enterprises. Amery's graphic design business was on the right bottom half and she lived in the loft that spanned the length of the two-story building. ~ Lorelei James

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

But I find that for myself, without exception, the more I deal with the work as something that is my own, as something that is personal, the more successful it is. ~ Marian Bantjes

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong. ~ Paul Rand

I've never had a problem with a dumb client. There is no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it. ~ Bob Gill

You cannot not communicate. ~ Paul Watzlawick

Being smart in the arts is the same as being smart in engineering is the same as being smart in writing is the same as being smart in anything, really. It's the ability to manipulate all the pieces of the puzzle in your mind, try to fit them together, and when they don't fit quite right ... you sand the edges/corners and make them all fit. ~ Gerald Jay Sussman

Forget all the rules you ever learned
about graphic design. ~ Bob Gill

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors. ~ George Santayana

There is a verse [in the Koran] that says God swears by time. Anything you gain in life, you pay for with your time. Time is the most important thing that has been given to man. ~ Shirin Ebadi

avoid underlining text, except in the case of hyperlinks. ~ Graphic Design Artists United

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only. ~ Paul Klee

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. ~ Howard Aiken

I went and studied graphic design, because it seemed to me that advertising is more honest - the image actually has a function. But once I started on that, I realized that was really boring. ~ Brian Froud

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. ~ El Lissitzky

Effective problem solving in design requires a balance of strategy and spontaneity, intelligence and creativity. ~ Maggie Macnab

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does. ~ David Carson

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. ~ Zig Ziglar

In the judgment of design engineers, the ordinary means of communicating with a computer are entirely inadequate. [ ... ] Graphical communication in some form or other is of vital importance in engineering as that subject is now conducted; we must either provide the capability in our computer systems, or take on the impossible task of training up a future race of engineers conditioned to think in a different way. ~ Maurice Wilkes

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy. ~ Jonathan Swift

I began doing writing projects and art and design projects to explore a new way of seeing Canada. Roots is one more way of continuing this exploration. I want to present a wide-open Canadian sense of color, adventure, communication and openness that defines our country. ~ Douglas Coupland

When it comes to the mental world, when we design things like health care and retirement and stock markets, we somehow forget the idea that we are limited. I think that if we understood our cognitive limitations in the same way that we understand our physical limitations ... we could design a better world. ~ Dan Ariely

We receive God's Will only in fragments; tiny fragments; one to each new now. It is our business to take them and piece them together, to fashion them into the design that is His and has been His from all eternity. What that design is we shall see only at our last moment. It will be perfect as God wills it to be perfect only if we live His Will in the now, the only fragment that is ours, the only fragment of God's plan that is allowed in our hands, the only fragment of Christ's life in us and our life in Christ that can be lived. But it is only by "gathering up these fragments, lest they be lost" that we can really live and attain life's only success - sainthood. ~ M. Raymond

A horn sounded in the distance and as Stella turned towards the sea to look at the enormous ship that had produced the sound, her gaze was locked on a scene so beautiful that the picturesque beach paled in comparison. A lifeguard was emerging from the water, his orange trunks stuck to his legs and water dripping from all over him. He shook his head to get rid of some of the water in his hair and Stella felt as if everything started developing in slow motion – tiny drops of water slid from his neck down his broad chest and muscular arms, along a weaving tattoo design on his right shoulder, and continued downwards towards his chest and washboard stomach, finally getting lost in his trunks' waist. A part of another tattoo was peeking over his trunks on his left hip, the other part hidden under them. His golden, tanned skin glistened in the sun and he moved with such grace that a panther would be deemed clumsy next to him. It was a total Baywatch moment. ~ Teodora Kostova

The characters populating male fantasies have little in common with those inhabiting female fantasies. In porn, the mind of a woman is usually empty of all thought and feeling – except for an overwhelming urge to have sex with plumbers, pizza boys, and her BFF. Women's hopes and fears are irrelevant. Their skills are inconsequential, except for the admirable ability to satisfy multiple lovers simultaneously and an impressive capacity for moaning. Their bodies, on the other hand, are depicted in lavish, graphic detail.

The heroes of romance novels often seem like members of a more evolved species. They are natural leaders, rich, powerful, and well-connected. Their minds are intelligent and savvy, though they are reticent about their abilities and hide their inner demons. Despite the fact that they are a five-star general or lord of southern England, they hide a troubled and tempestuous soul that can only be healed by the magical balm of a woman's love. ~ Ogi Ogas