134 Design Work Quotes

Following is our list of design work quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about how to design.

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Famous Design Work Quotes

Design is a process - an intimate collaboration between engineers, designers, and clients. — Henry Dreyfuss

Design is thinking made visual. — Saul Bass

Design isn't just about making things beautiful; it's also about making things work beautifully. — Roger Martin

Good design is good business. — Thomas J. Watson

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

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. — Steve Jobs

Design... is the integration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works. — Steve Jobs

I've been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving. — Jeffrey Veen

Design is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Design is everything. Everything! - Paul Rand

Design is everything. Everything! — Paul Rand

Great design is serious, not solemn - Paula Scher

Great design is serious, not solemn — Paula Scher

Design is the key to everything. If you learn how to design you can do anything. — Doug Cranmer

Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting. — Paul Rand

Design is in everything we make, but it's also between those things. It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy. — Erik Adigard

Short Design Work Quotes

  • Designing is not a profession but an attitude... Thinking in relationships. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
  • Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order — Victor Papanek
  • Good design is partially creativity and innovation, but primarily knowledge and awareness. — Chuck Green
  • Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem. — John Maeda
  • Good art inspires; Good design motivates. — Otl Aicher
  • Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take. — Chip Kidd
  • A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. — Bruno Munari
  • Inspiration the seed. Design but the flower. — Michael Langham
  • Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries. — Neville Brody
  • Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions. — William McDonough

Top 10 Design Work Quotes

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist - Francis of Assisi

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist — Francis of Assisi

Tax credits are designed to help people who work hard but who, through no fault of their own, don't earn enough to keep their families out of poverty. — Nicola Sturgeon

The main purpose of my work is to provoke people into using their imagination and make their surroundings more exciting. — Verner Panton

You can't do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously. — Wim Crouwel

My work is to help innovators and designers understand that the success of their creativity is in large part based on the success of their products. — Bernard Arnault

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

To create great work, here's how you must spend your time: 1% Inspiration 9% Perspiration 90% Justification — George Lois

We are working with a biotech company, Calypte, which has designed a urine test for the HIV antibody. — Luc Montagnier

I was one of the more talented ones at the design firm I joined, so I conducted my work pretty shrewdly. — Akira Toriyama

Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. — Bruce Mau

Design Work Image Quotes

My favorite project is always the next one. - Michael Graves quote

My favorite project is always the next one. — Michael Graves

Design work quote You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.

Interior Design Work Quotes

You don't have to know anything about a subject as long as you use common sense and imagination, plus enthusiasm! I use all periods of design in my work, for, after all, decorative styles are simply indications of a manner of living. — Dorothy Draper

I am going in now for interior decoration. By that I mean supplying objets d'art and giving advice regarding the decoration of their houses to wealthy persons who do not have the time, inclination, nor culture to do such work for themselves. It is nothing new. Women have done the same thing before. — Elsie De Wolfe

My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another. — William Morris

Design work quote Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise
Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise

...If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things. — William Morris

Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order. — William Morris

A decorator, no matter how talented, can't always get the desired results because sometimes there is resistance or maybe a lack of understanding on the part of the client. I think it is the decorator's job to work as a guide, to bring out the best qualities and the best attitudes. — Albert Hadley

Design work quote Work until you no longer have to introduce yourself.
Work until you no longer have to introduce yourself.

A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain. — St. Lucia

When talking with a set designer the dialogue is more centered on locations, interior design, what I like and what doesn't work. There is a certain taste I'm drawn to and feel inspired by, and finding that inspiration is what keeps the conversation moving forward. — Marc Forster

I'm not an interior designer - I'm a normal working mum who wants her house to look good and doesn't need a man to do it for her. — Andrea McLean

I have always believed that the more educated the clients are, the easier they are to work with. Clients with a knowledge of decorating, and an ability to articulate what they want from the finished project, make the designer's job easier. — Albert Hadley

How To Design Quotes

You cannot change how someone thinks, but you can give them a tool to use which will lead them to think differently. — Richard Buckminster Fuller

The only important thing about design is how it relates to people. - Victor Papanek

The only important thing about design is how it relates to people. — Victor Papanek

It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished. — William H. Whyte

Design work quote Maybe it won't work out. But maybe seeing if it does will be the best adventure ever.
Maybe it won't work out. But maybe seeing if it does will be the best adventure ever.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad. — Joe Wright

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. — Friedrich August von Hayek

Ninety percent of games lose money; 10 percent make a lot of money. And there's a consistency around the competitive advantages you create, so if you can actually learn how to do the art, the design, and the programming, you would be consistently very profitable. — Gabe Newell

Design work quote Just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.
Just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.

You have to stand outside the box to see how the box can be re-designed. — Charles Handy

This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, "Speed Racer" is an excess of nothingness. — Stephanie Zacharek

I like to mix and match vintage with designer. It's how I create my own style. — Carly Rae Jepsen

Most people have no idea how good their body is designed to feel. — Kevin Trudeau

How To Design Your Own Quotes

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life. — Carrie-Anne Moss

Brains aren't designed to get result; they go in directions. If you know how the brain works you can set your own directions. If you don't, then someone else will. — Richard Bandler

I have two rules when you come to my house on Halloween. Wear a costume - 'cause if you've manned your door at your own house, you know how many kids will roll up, 14 years old with no costume and an attitude. My other rule: don't grab. Let me assess you and then design a candy situation for you. — Greg Behrendt

Design work quote If you're not willing to do the work, don't complain about the result.
If you're not willing to do the work, don't complain about the result.

Learn how to set goals. That's the key to everything. That includes designing your own success. You define what the goal is, it's not somebody else's goal, it's yours. — Drew Carey

Design Process Quotes

It's a truly disgusting idea that the creator of the universe - capable of inventing the laws of physics and designing the evolutionary process - that this protégé of supernatural intellect couldn't think of a better way to forgive our sins than to have himself tortured to death. — Richard Dawkins

A century ago, most of today's processed foods didn't even exist. Now they are more than half of the American diet. We weren't designed for this. — Will Bulsiewicz

Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological process-or, shall we say, chemical-process ... a lot of nonsense is talked and written about it. — Greta Garbo

Design work quote Stay positive, work had and make it happen.
Stay positive, work had and make it happen.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail - Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer. — Dieter Rams

The mantra of any good security engineer is: "Security is a not a product, but a process." It's more than designing strong cryptography into a system; it's designing the entire system such that all security measures, including cryptography, work together. — Bruce Schneier

Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process. — Paul Rand

Design work quote Forget all the reasons why it won't work and believe the one reason it will.
Forget all the reasons why it won't work and believe the one reason it will.

A profound design process eventually makes the patron, the architect, and every occasional visitor in the building a slightly better human being. — Juhani Pallasmaa

It's not clear whether the brain actually is designed to have nightmares or whether this is actually the process going awry. — Matthew Walker

You can't buy something which does not exist. In a way, let's make things exist and then judge later. Don't cancel the process of creativity too early; let it flow. — Ross Lovegrove

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures. — Tom Peters

Design And Art Quotes

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli

The Jiu Jitsu I created was designed to give the weak ones a chance to face the heavy and strong. — Helio Gracie

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

Design work quote Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting. — Iris van Herpen

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick). — Robert Hooke

Design work quote You must be prepared to work always without applause.
You must be prepared to work always without applause.

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own earth — Frank Lloyd Wright

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness. — Massimo Vignelli

I never design a building before I've seen the site and met the people who will be using it. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Web Design Quotes

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

Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another. — Chip Kidd

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect - to help people work together - and not as a technical toy. — Tim Berners-Lee

Design work quote Work hard in silence. Let your succes be the noise.
Work hard in silence. Let your succes be the noise.

Websites promote you 24/7: No employee will do that. — Paul Cookson

Our weavings in the cosmic web are not self-contained. Rather, they are part of the design of our collective humanity. — Lisa Hunt

Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores. — Chip Kidd

Good Web design is about the character of the content, not the character of the designer. — Jeffrey Zeldman

I love the fact that I work with everything that has to do with the brand, the product, the environment, the online, the architecture, the web design, because I am somebody that loves making things, making experiences, creating things that people love to engage with. — Christopher Bailey

The usability tests we have conducted during the last year have shown an increasing reluctance among users to accept innovations in Web design. The prevailing attitude is to request designs that are similar to everything else people see on the Web. — Jakob Nielsen

Great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine. — Paul Cookson

People Writing About Design Work

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Read quotes by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
quotes on love, life and leadership

25 363
Read quotes by Michael Bierut

Michael Bierut
quotes on art, culture and life

61 498
Read quotes by Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs
quotes on leadership, death and innovation

587 14159
Read quotes by Paul Rand

Paul Rand
quotes on logos, design

20 460
Read quotes by Saul Bass

Saul Bass
quotes on music, leadership and art

19 1316
Read quotes by Thomas J. Watson

Thomas J. Watson
quotes on education, leadership and slavery

38 672

More Design Work Quotes

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

In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby. — Alistair Cooke

We should always look upon ourselves as God's servants, placed in God's world, to do his work; and accordingly labour faithfully for him; not with a design to grow rich and great, but to glorify God, and do all the good we possibly can. — David Brainerd

Creative people have to believe in the value of their work. If you don’t have any belief then you can’t give anything—designing is an act of giving, and a belief in the value of the work fuels the desire to express something. It’s important to know what your values are and to take care of them. — Peter Saville

I love working with a stylist but I also love having personal relationships with designers. A stylist is great for pulling together an entire outfit, accessories included, and for shaking me out of my comfort zone. — Elizabeth Banks

My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help for accomplishing his designs. Our single endeavor should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not to spoil his work by our shortcomings. — Isaac Jogues

Designers are closer to artists than to engineers. They’re not like normal managers, and you have to balance their creativity and rationality. John, Karl, Marc, they’re genius. You can’t put them into a rational environment. They’re sometimes late, and you have to accept that if you work with them, you have to be understanding with them. — Bernard Arnault

Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed. — Charles Caleb Colton

Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work. — Akira Toriyama

You have to begin to ask yourself which components of my belief system are things that I arrived through naturally from my observation of nature, and which parts of them are placed into me by a system that is designed to turn people into consumers. And I think more often than not that a greater percentage of your personality is not you at all. It’s a tapestry that has been cleverly woven by a system designed to make people feel totally normal spending the majority of their lives driving in a commute and working in a sh*t job and being tired all the time. — Duncan Trussell

After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. — Akira Toriyama

There is a rumour that I can't draw and never could. This is probably because I work so much with models. Models are one of the most beautiful design tools, but I still do the finest drawings you can imagine. — Jørn Utzon

For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work. — James Wan

The opposite of play is not work. It's depression. — Brian Sutton-Smith

No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held common by the people for whom the object is intended. — Adrian Forty

Don't worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop. — Jeffrey Zeldman

People who build their own home tend to be very courageous. These people are curious about life. They're thinking about what it means to live in a house, rather than just buying a commodity and making it work. — Tom Kundig

Follow your instincts - you never know if your ideas will work out unless you try them. — Lulu Guinness

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

Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. — Eric S. Raymond

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated. — Edsger Dijkstra

I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. — Harry Crews

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart. — William Gibson

A dull axe never loves grindstones, but a keen workman does; and he puts his tool on them in order that it may be sharp. And men do not like grinding; but they are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out with them, and therefore He is grinding them. — Henry Ward Beecher

The best design is the simplest one that works. — Albert Einstein

We designers, we don't work in a vacuum. We need business people. We are not the fine artists we are often confused with. — Dieter Rams

A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering. — Freeman Dyson

The Christian must know that the season, measure, and continuance of his sufferings are appointed by Infinite Wisdom, and designed to work for his everlasting good; and that grace and strength shall be afforded him according to his need. — John Newton

I am not concerned with simply surviving. I am very concerned about improving. I start each day by examining yesterday's work and looking for areas where I can improve. I am always trying to draw the characters better, and trying to design each panel somewhat in the manner a painter would treat his canvas. — Charles M. Schulz

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