100+ Memorable Design Quotes

Since re-launching my website a few hours ago, I’ve already received comment about the quotes that frequent the header area of the site.

While some are my own work, much credit has to go to designwashere for their design related ones. I’ve listed more below for your amusement. Enjoy!

My rates are as follows: 

£50 per hour.
£75 per hour if you watch.
£100 per hour if you help.

Design is easy. All you do is stare at the screen until drops of blood form on your forehead

-Marty Neumier

Practice safe design: Use a concept

-Petrula Vrontikis

I love the comment, “You must love designing for a living.” At that point I usually start to laugh or break into uncontrollable tears

– Andrew Lewis

It’s art if can’t be explained.
It’s fashion if no one asks for an explanation.
It’s design if it doesn’t need explanation

– Wouter Stokkel

Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up

– Pablo Picasso

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity

– John Carmack

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended

– Raymond Loewy

In design man becomes what he is. Animals have language and perception as well, but they do not design

-Otl Aicher

Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures

– Jeffrey Veen

Design from the spine and you’ll be fine

– Carl Heaton

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well

– Brian Reed

The client may be king but he’s not the art director

– Von R. Glitschka

Graphic designers are idea embalmers. loving undertakers preserving bits of data like so many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box

– Paul Saffo

To create a memorable design you need to start with a thought that’s worth remembering

– Thomas Manss

Graphic designers are, by and large selfish and spoiled. They stubbornly control and individually design things that are generally smaller than them, perfecting to a level appreciated only by people like them. They don’t share and play well with others

– Wayne Hunt

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures

– Ben Schneiderman

Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs

– Frank Chimero

Remember it takes a lot of shit, to create a beautiful flower

– Jacob Cass

Design is a good idea

– Emigre

If you know how to use a pencil to draw, you could draw anything. Now apply that to everything in life

– Justin Durban

We aren’t designing photocopies of web pages, we’re designing web pages

– Andy Clarke

A computer without Photoshop is like a dog with no legs. Sure is fun, but you can’t really do anything with it

– Benjamin Cavanagh

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools

– Douglas Adams

Everyone is an artist

– Joseph Beuys

Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it

– Pierre Bonnard

Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute

– Von R. Glitschka

Without good design it is easy to miss the point

– Bjarni Wark

Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking

– Chris Pullman

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness

– Massimo Vignelli

In the design process, my gut instinct is my best critic. I just wished I would always listen to it!

– Bryan Tamayo

Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end

– Colin Wright

Design has become the cover for unnecessary consumption

– Peter Saville

Design is creativity with strategy

– Rob Curedale

Stop looking at yourself as a designer and start thinking of yourself as a deliverer of ideas

– Stle Melvr

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist

– Salvador Dali

Good ideas turn into good designs fairly quickly. If you catch yourself fiddling too much with colors, borders and treatments to bring a design together, chances are the problem lies somewhere deeper

– Ryan Singer

We can’t just design an item that looks great. We also have to anticipate how it is boxed up, distributed, and shipped, as well as whether or not a seventeen-year-old kid with a summer job can stock it on the store shelf without ruining it

– Robin Perkins

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus

– David Hockney

Good design goes to heaven; bad design goes everywhere

– Mieke Gerritzen

The difference between a Designer and Developer when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it

– Scott Hanselman

People ignore design that ignores people

– Frank Chimero

Never re-invent the wheel, unless you’re sure the client needn’t go anywhere

– Russell Bishop

Making good design is easy. It’s polishing the half-assed stuff that takes time

– Stefan G. Bucher

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt… or in front of a piece of graphic design

– Stefan Sagmeister

Whether we like it or not, our legacy as designers is ugly. We’re largely responsible for fueling a culture of consumption

– Eric Karjalouto

Graphic designers find themselves in a role of visual dishwashers for the information Architects’ chefs

– Gunnar Swanson

Design is like a mom, nobody notices when she’s around, but everybody misses her when she’s not

– Santiago Borray

A designer who gives her art away, makes no pay, A designer who keeps her art to herself, makes no friends

– Amber Seree Allen

Good design means never having to say “Click Here.”

– Shawn Leslie

Being a graphic designer gets you used to rejection of your brilliance. So it’s good practice for dating

– Heather Phillips

Inspiration the seed. Design but the flower

– Michael Langham

Every designers’ dirty little secret is that they copy other designers’ work. They see work they like, and they imitate it. Rather cheekily, they call this inspiration

– Aaron Russell

Design should never say, “Look at me.” It should always say, “Look at this”

– David Craib

Design is intelligence made visible

– Alina Wheeler

Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood

– Fabien Barral

You can’t do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously

– Wim Crouwal

Maths is easy; design is hard

– Jeffrey Veen

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does

– David Carsong