Michael Bierut Quotes

#1. Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.

Michael Bierut

#2. Part of maturing as a designer is discovering what you're good at.

Michael Bierut

#3. The smell of profit is clean and sweet, whatever the source.

Juvenal

#4. I'll put you in a jar on my shelf for a cold, rainy day when I need you the most.

Karen Quan

#5. Boy, you resolve not to go down the path of a Dark Lord and the universe starts messing with you the instant the Hat comes off your head. Some days it just doesn't pay to fight destiny. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to start on my resolution to not be a Dark Lord.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#6. Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith.

Michael Bierut

#7. Simplicity, wit, and good typography.

Michael Bierut

#8. BE PURPOSEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN THE OPTIONS ARE NEARLY INFINITE.

Michael Bierut

#9. 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

#10. designers actually can change the world for the better by making the complicated simple and finding beauty in truth.

Michael Bierut

#11. If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying ...

Michael Bierut

#12. I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.

Henry David Thoreau

#13. Keeping demons from this world is your mandate, a mandate from heaven. And a mandate from heaven isn't something you can just ignore.

Cassandra Clare

#14. No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it.

Michael Bierut

#15. So they, who climb to wealth, forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them
but I regret
That I should ape the ways of pride.

William C. Bryant

#16. The problem contains the solution.

Michael Bierut

#17. Not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything.

Michael Bierut

#18. We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.

Erin McKean

#19. Under its current form, that is imperialism-controlled, debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave ...

Thomas Sankara

#20. Islam is part of Germany.

Angela Merkel

#21. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#22. If you're going to get into music, you've got to learn the 12-bar blues.

Johnny Ramistella

#23. We have so much patience with ourselves, why not borrow some of that and use it on others.

Lettie Cowman

#24. the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be.

Michael Bierut

#25. ...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