We all need a bit of design inspiration from time to time. If you’re stuck in a creative cul de sac, take a read through these inspiring design quotes. Real wisdom, from some of the worlds greatest designers. Enjoy, then go and create great work!
People ignore design that ignores people.
Frank Chimero
Design is what you do when you don’t yet know what you are doing.
George Stiny
The perfect time to start something never arrives.
Anonymous
Don’t just follow your dreams; chase them down, grab hold and don’t let go.
Kellie Elmore
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Miyamoto Musashi
If you believe you can do it go out there and do it because that’s the only way you’re gonna get it.
Harry Main
It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take things to.
Jean-Luc Godard
We tend to forget there’s more to design than designing.
Justin Ahrens
The greatest results in life are usually attained by common sense and perseverance.
Owen Feltham
Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.
Milton Glaser
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs.
Frank Chimero
Design is thinking made visual.
Saul Bass
Design is what you do when you want to express yourself.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci
Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.
Wayne Dyer
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
Steve Jobs
It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
Albert Einstein
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, {your} freedom of thought becomes impossible.
Salman Rushdie
Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.
Brian Reed
Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Fabien Barral
Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.
Erik Adigard
If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen
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-Exupery
It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
Steve Krug
Practice safe design: Use a concept.
Petrula Vrontikis
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Pablo Picasso
What separates design from art is that design is meant to be... functional.
Cameron Moll
If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
Walt Disney
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
Fashion fades, only style remains the same.
Coco Chanel
A shoe is not only a design, but it’s a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you’re going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.
Christian Louboutin
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams
Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.
Dieter Rams
Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
Charles Eames
Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.
Milton Glaser
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
You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt… or in front of a piece of graphic design.
Stefan Sagmeister
Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.
David Carson
I’ve never had a problem with a dumb client. There is no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it.
Bob Gill
It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.
Paula Scher
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
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-Exupéry
Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores. If the one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always, always, always another.
Chip Kidd
But I find that for myself, without exception, 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
Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.
Neville Brody
Socrates said, “Know thyself.” I say, “Know thy users.” And guess what? They don’t think like you do.
Joshua Brewer
I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent.
Saul Bass
Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs.
Frank Chimero
I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those two things.
Lindon Leader
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.
Jeffrey Zeldman
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.
Massimo Vignelli
Think more, design less.
Ellen Lupton
