Whether you’re an expert or have a DIY project, it’s important to know your design philosophy. Because of this, I’ve rounded up some of the best design quotes that will keep you inspired! đš
Below, you will find a wide range of artistic, innovative, visionary, and smart design quotes that will help you build a phenomenal blueprint.Â
Side note: If I have missed any design quotes or maybe you have your own that you want to share to fire up the imagination, then feel free to share it in the comments! đ
83+ Inspiring Design Quotes & Sayings!
1. “Simple is good.” – Jim Henson
2. “Good design is honest.” – Dieter Rams
3. “Design is thinking made visual.” – Saul Bass
4. “Design has to work, art does not.” – Donald Judd
5. “Design is so simple. Thatâs why itâs so complicated.” – Paul Rand
6. “Design is where science and art break even.” – Robin Mathew
7. “Accessible design is good design.” – Steve Ballmer
8. “If no one hates it, no one really loves it.” – Jessica Walsh
9. “Design cannot rescue failed content.” – Edward R. Tufte
10. “Make it simple, but significant.” – Don Draper
11. “Good art inspires. Good design motivates.” – Otl Aicher
12. “Good design is good business.” – Thomas Watson Jr.
13. “People ignore designs that ignore people.” – Frank Chimero
14. “Design is intelligence made visible.” – Alina Wheeler
15. “Technology over technique produces emotionless design.” – Daniel Mall
16. “A design isnât finished until somebody is using it.” – Brenda Laurel
17. “Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.” – Â Brian Reed
18. “Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.” – Neville Brody
19. “Design adds value faster than it adds costs.” – Joel Spolsky
20. “Every great design begins with an even better story.” – Lorinda Mamo
21. “Designers may be the true intellectuals of the future.” – Paola Antonelli
22. “Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” – Margaret Oscar
23. “No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.” – Salvador DalĂ
24. “The function of design is letting design function.” – Micha Commeren
25. “If you can design one thing, you can design everything.” – Massimo Vignelli
26. “Design is the body language of your marketing. Donât slouch.” – Mark King
27. “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” – Joe Sparano
28. “Simplicity carried to an extreme, becomes elegance.” – Jon Franklin
29. “Design is a formal response to a strategic question.” – Mariona Lopez
30. “The details are not the details. They make the design.” – Charles Eames
31. “Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking.” – Ellen Lupton
32. “I think designers who arenât selfish do really awful work.” – Paul Sahre
33. “Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.â – Charles Eames
34. “Design is so simple. That’s why is so complicated.” – Paul Rand
35. “Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.” – Massimo Vignelli
36. “Bad design shouts at you. Good design is the silent seller.” – Shane Meendering
37. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
38. “Design is as much a matter of finding problems as it is solving them.” – Bryan Lawson
39. “Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.” – Hans Hoffman
40. “Design transcends agenda. It speaks to the politics of optimism.” – Paul Bennet
41. “The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.” – Douglas Martin
42. “Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.” – John Maeda
43. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
44. “Design is not a single object or dimension. Design is messy and complex.” – Natasha Jen
45. “Design can be art. Design can be simple. Thatâs why itâs so complicated.” – Paul Rand
46. “Great ideas, like babies, are often conceived after a few glasses of wine.” – Sharon Moore
47. “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” – Robert L. Peters
48. “If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” – Ralf Speth
49. “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” – Robert L. Peters
50. “Design is more important than technology in most consumer applications.” – Dave McClure
51. “Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.” –
52. “What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” – Ray Eames
53. “There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.” – Massimo Vignelli
54. “You donât think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.” – George Nelson
55. “Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems.” – Tim Brown
56. “Truly elegant design incorporates top-notch functionality into a simple, uncluttered form.” – David Lewis
57. “The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design.” – Adam Judge
58. “Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.” – Tate Linden
59. “Great design is a multi-layered relationship between human life and its environment.” – Naoto Fukasawa
60. “Itâs through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.” – Paula Scher
61. “To create a memorable design you need to start with a thought thatâs worth remembering.” – Thomas Manss
62. “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, itâs decoration.” – Jeffrey Zeldman
63. “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.” – Paul Rand
64. “Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasnât theirs.” – Frank Chimero
65. “Design is not really a way for me to express myself. Design is a product that we produce for a client.” – Peleg Top
66. “Design is like a mom, nobody notices when sheâs around, but everybody misses her when sheâs not.” – Santiago Borray
67. “People donât use a product because of the great design; great design helps them use the product.” – Viran Anuradha Dayaratne
68. “No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held common by the people for whom the object is intended.” – Adrian Forty
69. “To say that something is designed means it has intentions that go beyond its function. Otherwise, itâs just planning.” – Ayse Birsel
70. “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
71. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry
72. “Design and art are independent coordinates that provide their greatest satisfactions when experienced simultaneously.” – Milton Glaser
73. “Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration, and from trusting your intuition.” – Freeman Thomas
74. “Design everything on the assumption that people are not heartless or stupid but marvelously capable, given the chance.” – John Chris Jones
75. “Itâs really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people donât know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs
76. “Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.” – Pete Hein
77. “Just because something looks good doesnât mean itâs useful. And just because something is useful does not make it beautiful.” – Joshua Brewer
78. “Design is in everything we make, but itâs also between those things. Itâs a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.” – Erik Adigard
79. “A good designer finds an elegant way to put everything you need on a page. A great designer convinces you half that shit is unnecessary.” – Mike Monteiro
80. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry
81. “Design isnât crafting a beautiful textured button with breathtaking animation. Itâs figuring out if thereâs a way to get rid of the button altogether.” – Edward Tufte
82. “Good designâs not about what medium youâre working in. Itâs about thinking hard about what you want to do and what you have to work with before you start.” – Susan Kare
83. “The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.” – Paul Rand
84. “To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.” – Paul Rand