Graphic Design Quotes

• Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

  Paul Rand

  Art, Simple, Design

  87 Copy quote

• If you can design one thing, you can design everything.

  Massimo Vignelli

  Design, Designer, Graphic Designer

  Massimo Vignelli, Lella Vignelli, Images Publishing (2004). “Design is One”, p.4, Images Publishing

  141 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.

  Nolan Bushnell

  Motivational, Death, Inspiration

  43 Copy quote

• A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Artist, Design, Synthesis

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2009). “Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure”, p.116, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.

  Robert L. Peters

  Inspiring, Art, Design

  49 Copy quote

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

  David Carson

  Rocks, Rock And Roll, Design

  171 Copy quote

• Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

  George Santayana

  Design, Individuality, Hobbies

  19 Copy quote

• Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order

  Victor Papanek

  Meaningful, Order, Design

  44 Copy quote

• If you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

  Eric Gill

  Design, Looks, Care

  Eric Gill (1947). “Letters”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.

  Bruno Munari

  Badass, Bad Ass, Design

  75 Copy quote

• Good design encourages a viewer to want to learn more.

  Alexander Isley

  Design, Want, Viewers

  23 Copy quote

• Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.

  Michael Bierut

  Design, Fiction, Facts

  Michael Bierut (2012). “Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design”, p.168, Chronicle Books

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Work, Believe, Creativity

  108 Copy quote

• 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

  Communication, Heart, Knowledge

  55 Copy quote

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

  Wolfgang Weingart

  Relationship, Ideas, Design

  118 Copy quote

• 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

  Eye, Light, Color

  20 Copy quote

• Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket. Helvetica is here to stay.

  Adrian Frutiger

  Jeans, Design, Letters

  261 Copy quote

• Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people.

  Shepard Fairey

  Art, Believe, Ideas

  129 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Motivational, Reading

  100 Copy quote

• Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

  Chip Kidd

  Design, Problem, Given

  70 Copy quote

• If you love something, the work will be just fine.

  Herbert Matter

  Love, Photography, Work

  27 Copy quote

• Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

  Chip Kidd

  Design, Planning, Form

  Chip Kidd (2002). “The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Roots, Knowing, Design

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Mind, Society, Doe

  86 Copy quote

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

  Herb Lubalin

  Creativity, Greatness, Design

  147 Copy quote