Quotations
- “There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.”
- Ansel Adams
Recalled on his death April 22, 1984
- “Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.”
- George Sand (1804-1876)
Pearls of Wisdom
ed. J. Agel and W. Glanze, 1987
- “That the separation of form and function, of concept and execution, is not likely to produce objects of esthetic value has been repeatedly demonstrated. Similarly, it has been been shown that the system which regards esthetics as irrelevant, which separates the artist from his product, which fragments the work of the individual, which creates by committee, and which makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.”
- Paul Rand
Thoughts on Design, p9-10
London, New York, Studio Vista; Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970
- “Even if it is true that the average man seems most comfortable with the commonplace and familiar, it is equally true that catering to bad taste, which we so readily attribute to the average reader, merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies the reader one of the most easily accessible means for esthetic development and eventual enjoyment.”
- Paul Rand
Thoughts on Design, p95
London, New York, Studio Vista; Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970
- “In a world rife with unsolicited messages, typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn. Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.”
- Robert Bringhurst
The Elements of Typographic Style: Version 2.4, p17
Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 1996
- “With type as with philosophy, music and food, it is better to have a little of the best than to be swamped with the derivative, the careless, the routine.”
- Robert Bringhurst
The Elements of Typographic Style: Version 2.4, p117
Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 1996
- ”…design, stripped to its essence, can be defined as the human capacity to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature, to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives.”
- John Heskett
Toothpicks & Logos: Design in Everyday Life, p7
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
- ”Simplicity does not mean want or poverty. It does not mean the absence of any decor, or absolute nudity. It only means that the decor should belong intimately to the design proper, and that anything foreign to it should be taken away.”
- Paul Jacques Grillo
- ”A designer can mull over complicated designs for months. Then suddenly the simple, elegant, beautiful solution occurs to him. When it happens to you, it feels as if God is talking! And maybe He is.”
- Leo Frankowski
The Cross-Time Engine
- “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”
- Niels Bohr, Danish physicist
as qtd. by Alan Mackay in
The Harvest of a Quiet Eye
- ”What it is, what it has been, what it always will be - is to do good work. That expression comes from an interview with Mies van der Rohe done late in his life. In the end, all I am ever trying to do with every project I do is to do good work. Not for fame, fortune or money. Just really to do something good.
”
- Richard Saul Wurman
interview at InfoDesign
