Graphic designer Quotes

List of top sayings and quotations by famous graphic designers like Paula Scher, Neville Brody and Stefan Sagmeister


  • The best way to accomplish serious design .

    .. is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.

    — Paula Scher
    256
  • My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing.

    — Paula Scher
    186
  • It's through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.

    — Paula Scher
    184
  • Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.

    — Neville Brody
    171
  • An electrician isn't an opinion former, but a graphic designer is.

    My argument is that all graphic designers hold high levels of responsibility in society. We take invisible ideas and make them tangible. That's our job.

    — Neville Brody
    170
  • Typography is a hidden tool of manipulation within society.

    — Neville Brody
    169
  • Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.

    — David Carson
    168
  • You have to utilize who you are in your work.

    Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.

    — David Carson
    167
  • The job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable... important to a public, that involves the public.

    — Paula Scher
    154
  • You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can't do a great ad without good typography.

    — Herb Lubalin
    144
  • People think that digital language is a fixed language, but it's not: it's very fluid. It's like I'm doing a painting where the paint refuses to dry.

    — Neville Brody
    118
  • For me, typography is a triangular relationship between design idea, typographic elements, and printing technique.

    — Wolfgang Weingart
    117
  • What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?

    — Wolfgang Weingart
    116
  • Its focus wasn't on the written word but how the word was written.

    — Neville Brody
    110
  • Hobbies are for people that don't like what they're doing.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    103
  • Just as typography is human speech translated into what can be read, so photography is the translation of reality into a readable image.

    — Herbert Bayer
    101
  • Related Authors

    • Paula Scher
    • Neville Brody
    • Stefan Sagmeister
    • Michael Bierut
    • David Carson
    • Tibor Kalman
    • Herbert Bayer
    • Wolfgang Weingart
    • Alexey Brodovitch
    • Herb Lubalin
    • R. J. Palacio
    • Erik Spiekermann
    • Lester Beall
    • Wim Crouwel
    • John Maeda
    • Emil Ruder
    • Seymour Chwast
    • Armin Hofmann
    • Ellen Lupton
    • Jessica Walsh
    • Zuzana Licko
    • David Airey
    • Alvin Lustig
    • Katherine McCoy
    • Bob Gill
    • Jonathan Barnbrook
    • Thomas Manss
    • Storm Thorgerson
    • Lou Dorfsman
    • Otl Aicher
    • Lorraine Wild
    • Bill Gold
    • Jessica Helfand
    • Josef Muller-Brockmann
    • Susan Kare
  • The better people communicate, the greater will be the need for better typography-expressive typography.

    — Herb Lubalin
    99
  • My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society.

    — Herbert Bayer
    98
  • The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read;

    their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read.

    — Zuzana Licko
    97
  • Creativity isn't about the advantage or disadvantage of a specific time or culture. Creativity is something that comes internally from a human being having a genuine mistrust of rules. And that may be the constant. It's almost like there's some rebellion in it.

    — Paula Scher
    95
  • Great design is serious, not solemn

    — Paula Scher
    90
  • Beige is the color of indecision.

    — Paula Scher
    88
  • No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it.

    — Michael Bierut
    87
  • I'm very much a word person, so that's why typography for me is the obvious extension. It just makes my words visible.

    — Erik Spiekermann
    84
  • 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
    83
  • To be a good designer, you would need to have deep and far-reaching interests outside of the profession.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    83
  • You can't do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously.

    — Wim Crouwel
    80
  • The grid is like the lines on a football field.

    You can play a great game in the grid or a lousy game. But the goal is to play a really fine game.

    — Wim Crouwel
    80
  • BE PURPOSEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN THE OPTIONS ARE NEARLY INFINITE.

    — Michael Bierut
    80
  • Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    79
  • I love the big scale and immediate impact of posters. They're my favourite things to design.

    — Paula Scher
    79
  • For some reason I have a visual intuition that allows me to design things in an interesting way, and I don't know where that came from. Because I don't have this formal training, I seem to drift in a different direction.

    — David Carson
    77
  • You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    75
  • Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty.

    — Emil Ruder
    74
  • There should be no separation between spontaneous work with an emotional tone and work directed by the intellect. Both are supplementary to each other and must be regarded as intimately connected. Discipline and freedom are thus to be seen as elements of equal weight, each partaking of the other.

    — Armin Hofmann
    73
  • I think it's ultimately inhuman to only see things for their functionality.

    We want things to be more than that. The desire for beauty is something that's in us, and it's not trivial.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    73
  • 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
    72
  • You can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

    — R. J. Palacio
    71
  • The picture is the imitation and converted reality of the goods, in short, an indirect substitute for reality.

    — Herbert Bayer
    71
  • Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith.

    — Michael Bierut
    69
  • To design is to plan, to order, to relate, and to control.

    In short, it opposes all means of disorder and accident.

    — Emil Ruder
    69
  • It would seem unlikely that a manufacturer of short-lived paperboard boxes could make the slightest cultural impact upon his time. But the facts show that if even the humblest product is designed, manufactured, and distributed with a sense of human values and with a taste for quality, the world will recognize the presence of a creative force.

    — Herbert Bayer
    69
  • If you want to communicate something, youd better make sure that your design piece is well-dressed and that its teeth are fixed. At the same time, I still believe that if it is only stylistically great and it has nothing to say, it still is not going to make a lasting impression on anybody.

    — Stefan Sagmeister
    67
  • Berthold is still a good typeface, but even Berthold has some less than attractive features, and then I just cut them off because I didn't like them.

    — Wolfgang Weingart
    66
  • The attention someone gives to what he or she makes is reflected in the end result, whether it is obvious or not.

    — Erik Spiekermann
    65
  • Having no purpose is the function of art, so somebody else can look at it and ask a question. Design is different - you're supposed to understand what's going on. You can be delighted by it, intrigued by it, but you're supposed to know it's a hot dog stand.

    — Paula Scher
    64
  • The designer's role in the development, application and protection of the trademark may be described as pre-creative, creative and post-creative.

    — Lester Beall
    62
  • I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.

    — R. J. Palacio
    61
  • If you're digging a hole in the wrong place, making it deeper doesn't help anything.

    — Seymour Chwast
    59
  • They [letters] are my friends Some people look at bottles of wine, or whatever - girls' bottoms - I get kicks out of looking at type.

    — Erik Spiekermann
    57
  • Related Topics

    • success
    • accomplish
    • design
    • totally
    • completely
    • unqualified
    • job
    • realizing
    • dictionary
    • childlike
    • definitions
    • endeavor
    • engaging
    • gambling
    • numbers
    • play
    • two
    • activity
    • mistake
    • good design
    • grows
    • order
    • graphic design
    • designer
    • inspirational design
    • design inspiration
    • inspirational graphic design
    • inspiring design
    • web design
    • technology
    • painting
    • paint
    • digital
    • responsibility
    • opinion

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