Top 100 Design Work Quotes
#1. Designing is my hobby. If I didn't do what I do for a living - at some point when I don't do this for a living - I'll probably just do design work. I love finding really special pieces of furniture.
Ellen DeGeneres
#2. The best design work is really done when you spend more time with people, when you have the opportunity to be of the same mindset and the same incentives as the founder of the business.
Yves Behar
#3. I was a cartoonist when I was at university, but I decided to go into movie making knowing that I could still draw by doing movies, design work, story boards, and such.
Robert Rodriguez
#4. When I am there at our global product development centers, I am meeting with the design team and reviewing design work being done there and meeting with engineers responsible for work being done specific to that region, meeting with purchasing team.
Mary Barra
#5. Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
Fred Brooks
#6. Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.
Barbara Kruger
#7. Design is all about relationships. Unfortunately, many designers don't fully appreciate this. Some of the best design work I've ever done was drinking coffee or beers with engineers, marketing people, and business development hustlers. And I wholeheartedly mean design work.
Daniel Burka
#8. First and foremost, I'm a decorator and product designer. Everything I do, the television shows, the books, that comes from the design work. It's what I love.
Nate Berkus
#9. I'm a big believer you should design work around a vast majority of people who want to do the right thing rather than around the tiny minority who might take advantage.
Gail Kelly
#10. SAT tests are designed by huge panels of experts in education and psychology who work for years to design tests in which not one single question measures any bit of knowledge that anyone might actually need in the real world. We should applaud kids for getting lower scores.
Dave Barry
#11. Obviously, I come from one background, and the people that design fitness equipment have been doing it for years and years, and they know what works and doesn't work.
Lance Armstrong
#12. For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.
James Wan
#13. I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer.
Christian Louboutin
#14. A lot of young girls don't realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven't thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.
Rhianna Pratchett
#15. Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#16. ...use design as a secret disguise to infiltrate whatever world you want to go into. If you do that over and over again, and then translate that interest and curiosity into the work that you're doing, you'll do great.
Michael Bierut
#17. A dog can be a living work of art, a constant reminder of the exquisite design and breathtaking detail of nature, beauty on four paws.
Dean Koontz
#18. Do work you love and are passionate about, look outside of the world of graphic design for inspiration.
Jessica Walsh
#19. Design and style should work toward making you look good and feel good without a lot of effort so you can get on with the things that matter.
Donna Karan
#20. Design isn't just about making things beautiful; it's also about making things work beautifully.
Roger Martin
#21. I've always considered myself a graphic artists - a draftsman - as opposed to a typist. I do still work on a drawing table. At times drawing on a computer feels like I'm drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch.
Michael Schwab
#22. I gave the couple a hint of a design that would work great with the bones of their home. They weren't ready for it, and they embarrassed themselves and that's too bad.
Douglas Wilson
#23. When I met Dante I didn't work in the movies, but I enjoyed so much the movies. I worked in interior design and when I met Dante, we tried to do something together.
Francesca Lo Schiavo
#24. I want to design dresses for the purposeful woman. Women who have passion - whether that be work- or something outside of work.
Sarah Lafleur
#25. The designer must think first and work later.
Will Burtin
#26. I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.
Bob Dylan
#27. Now architecture consists of order, which in Greek is called taxis ... Order is the balanced adjustment of the details of the work separately, and, as to the whole, the arrangement of the proportion with a view to a symmetrical result.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
#28. Labour at your work until people cannot imagine what you have designed existing any other way.
Alan Moore
#29. All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.
Charles James
#31. I've learned a tremendous amount over the years by watching designers work. I now have a good understanding of what sits well on the body, not to mention the importance of a great cut and quality.
Claudia Schiffer
#32. I had an argument with my students on why they want to present their work in an iBook, it's like your sister who has no design training, put on some outfits in the bedroom, took some pictures, sent them to Apple and after paying 40 quid, you have a portfolio! I can't believe it.
Louise Wilson
#33. Designers don't actually solve problems. They work through them.
Marty Neumeier
#34. I'd call my work 'instinctual design.' I like to find the spirit of a piece that defies time, age, and occasion. My clothes give the wearer the chance to develop their own voice within a wardrobe, and I think of them as curators of their personal style.
Chris Benz
#35. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author.
Isaac D'Israeli
#36. It was not the story of design or clothes, it was the fantasy of women that made me want to work in fashion,
Alber Elbaz
#37. The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself. And then after that, I'd say once you have that, it may be hard work, but you can actually design your life.
Diane Von Furstenberg
#38. You will find scraps of paper all over the house when I am designing a new woodcut and woe betide the person who touches one of the scraps. When I have the exact design in my mind, I set the model up, pots and flowers, leaves and background, and begin work.
Margaret Preston
#39. It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.
Donald A. Norman
#40. There really are so many lines of work that you can join that don't have to only be design. And that was one that particularly interested me a lot, because the editors could appreciate all the trends, all the designs and all the work of the designers.
Nina Garcia
#41. Good work is always done in defiance of management.
Bob Woodward
#42. I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left.
Jonathan Ive
#43. You just have to know what the right laws are under the right circumstances, and design the device with the correct laws. You cannot expect old designs to work in new circumstances. But new designs can work in new circumstances ...
Richard Feynman
#44. Leaders can create a high productivity level by providing the appropriate organizational structure and job design, and by acknowledging and appreciating hard work.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
#45. Shall we keep our hands in our bosom, or stretch ourselves on our beds of laziness, while all the world about us is hard at work, in pursuing the designs of its creation?
Isaac Barrow
#46. You are not designing for yourself, and shouldn't be. Most people using the Web don't understand (most of) what makes it work and don't want to. Design for those people. There are many more of them than you.
Max Levchin
#47. My doodles and sketches are not the work of an academic engineer. They represent many years of design study in attempts to produce the best value for money in the field of small car design.
Alec Issigonis
#49. Once you come up with a premise, you have to work out how it all happened. It's a bit like coming up with a spectacular roof design first. Before you can get it up there, you need to build a solid foundation and supporting structure.
Linwood Barclay
#50. The work needs to get out of your head and on to the table, and it needs to be done from the heart.
Paula Scher
#51. The very design of the gospel doth tend to self-abasing; and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation. Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature: it is a contradiction to be a sanctified man, or a true Christian, and not humble.
Richard Baxter
#52. Problems in medicine do not mean that homeopathic sugar pills work; just because there are problems with aircraft design, that doesn't mean that magic carpets really fly.
Ben Goldacre
#53. Nothing they design ever gets in the way of a work of art.
Robert Hughes
#54. Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer.
Michael Martin Hammer
#55. Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can't always count on having Albert Einstein in the patent office, so you design its procedures to work even if you hire Mr. Bean by mistake.
Charles Stross
#56. The binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates.
Oscar Wilde
#57. Anyway, seeking work is a tad difficult given the poor design of the streets with their prohibitive curbs and driveways that don't quite line up.
Steve Martin
#59. I had artists that refused to work on Chappie if they were working on a design that actually said Denel on the side of the thing. But anyway, it's the blurring of fiction and reality that was appealing and I certainly did not want them to be in the movie and not be themselves.
Neill Blomkamp
#60. Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake.
Jeffrey Zeldman
#61. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.
Helen Keller
#62. To create great work, here's how you must spend your time:
1% Inspiration
9% Perspiration
90% Justification
George Lois
#63. One of the things about working for an old school studio like Warner Bros. is that there is an institutional culture and institutional memory, in terms of production design, camera work, and directors who understand how to do this kind of thing.
Bruno Heller
#64. In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design.
Brian Wildsmith
#65. The two most important things about people on a revolutionary team are their ability and passion. Their educational level or work experience is meaningless
most of the engineers who did ground-breaking work of the Macintosh design didn't even graduate from college.
Guy Kawasaki
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Music defines decades, and quite clearly shapes the rhythm, vitality of fashion, attitude and social behaviors. The anthology, just like most of my work, from photography to fashion design, is about and around music.
Hedi Slimane
#69. A hen's egg is, quite simply, a work of art, a masterpiece of design and construction with, it has to be said, brilliant packaging!
Delia Smith
#70. In a way, my design works as much because the belt is comfortable for the user as it does because it is safer.
Nils Bohlin
#71. I was on a Japanese designers' pedestal - considered a maestro. My design was getting closer to a couturier's work, and I felt like I was missing something.
Yohji Yamamoto
#72. My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians.
Robert Moog
#73. That was always my frustration with so many of these shows, because design is not an ambush ... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.
Genevieve Gorder
#74. create interiors for modern living that are informed by a classic perspective with timeless appeal. In order to design spaces that work for who
Sarah Richardson
#75. My dreams are my work. I design out of the things that I love.
Ralph Lauren
#76. I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What's the glove design? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can't just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.
Chris Hadfield
#77. Some architects think of clients only as sources of work and income but most good architecture is in fact the result of successful design collaboration between a talented architect and an enlightened, motivated client.
Roger K. Lewis
#78. Day by day, the number of devices, platforms,
and browsers that need to work with your site grows.
Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift
in how we'll build websites for the decade to come.
Jeffrey Veen
#79. You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.
Massimo Vignelli
#80. Anything I do informs how I design. I wouldn't isolate any one activity. Everything I do feeds back to my life, and my life is expressed in my work.
Antoine Predock
#81. My studio cube is an experiment in solar heating and design. The south wall is covered with glass planks that collect and distribute heat naturally to my work studio on the second level.
Steven Holl
#82. Former design studios that now do nothing more than curate their blogs showing other people's work and sell ad space to make a living. It all feels very strange to me.
Craig Ward
#83. Everything God does has purpose and intention behind that design. It is a master design, and every little thing has its proper place and function.
A.W. Tozer
#84. Designing a tour is a daily thing.
I work on it every day for several months. I'm involved with every department, from lighting, sound, music direction, the visual direction. The set list is something I create myself and that's the root of everything
Shania Twain
#85. Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
Peter Thiel
#86. Design is an art of situations. Designers respond to a need, a problem, a circumstance, that arises in the world. The best work is produced in relation to interesting situations - an open-minded client, a good cause, or great content.
Ellen Lupton
#87. I don't design cars. I'm not a designer. I know what I desire to be built, I know what the end result is, the horsepower, the competition we'll be working against - but I leave it to the people who work with me to put it all together. I don't do anything.
Carroll Shelby
#88. Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.
Samuel Johnson
#90. I couldn't write a happy movie or romantic comedy to save my life. Yes, Noel Coward's an idol, but his plays are serious to me. 'Private Lives' and 'Design for Living' both have an edge. Without psychoanalyzing myself, I think I exorcise my demons in my work.
John Logan
#91. I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it ... the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.
Peter Zumthor
#92. In the Internet Century, a product manager's job is to work together with the people who design, engineer, and develop things to make great products.
Eric Schmidt
#93. If you look at any designer you admire, whose work inspires you, and whose approach somehow resonates with you, I promise you'll find a person who does not think of what they do as just their job
Alexander Isley
#94. As we let go of the machine model of work, we begin to step back and see ourselves in new ways, to appreciate wholeness, and to design organizations that honor and make use of the totality of who we are.
Margaret J. Wheatley
#95. Whatever I design, it has to please my eye. If I go to work on an office block, I'll draw the office that I want to walk into. If it's a piece of crystal, it must feel the way I want it to feel in my hand. If it's women's wear, it must be something I'd like to see my wife dressed in.
John Rocha
#96. I remember a time at Yale when my work was being critiqued by Paul Rand. Mr. Rand told me only to use Helvetica as a display face never in text, then he squinted, leaned in, and whispered in my ear, "because Helvetica looks like dogshit in text".
Kyle Cooper
#97. In order to fix it, you need a passionate anger about something that doesn't work well.
James Dyson
#98. A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.
Truman Capote
#99. Reduction is precisely what a work of art opposes. Easy answers ... annotations, arrows ... an oudine of its design ... very seriously mislead.
William H Gass
#100. I was always interested in art at school, and after year twelve, senior year, I spent three years studying graphic design at college. I worked in advertising for two years but didn't like it much, then began doing a bit of illustration work for various publishers.
Graeme Base
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