35 Quotes on Design That Will Fuel Up Your Creativity

Three photos side by side: cake, doughnut and cupcake figurines on pink, an orange light bulb on teal, and a doll on grid paper on peach

Sometimes to fuel up your creative process you need a kind word from a friend that was there before. Inspiration comes in so many shapes and sizes, but for designers and creative people, it often comes from people who have done it before and know how hard it can sometimes be. Let’s dive into a curated list of quotes to fuel up your inspiration.

Paul Rand quote card about design ideas growing out of careful study and observation, not preconceptions, on peach

Good design is the result of a process

Paul Rand was an American graphic designer best known for corporate logo design, like IBM and ABC. A great product is always the result of research and multiple iterations. And the idea you have at the beginning, it may seem significant, but it always ends up to be different.

E. F. Schumacher quote card about simplifying taking genius and courage, while anyone can make things bigger and more complex, on violet

It takes courage to makes things simple

E. F. Schumacher was a German statistician and economist. We should not forget that design is also about courage. No everybody is willing to go against the market or what the customers want or need.

John McNeece quote card about Henry Ford’s customers asking for a faster horse instead of a car, on green

Have a vision

John McNeece, a cruise ship designer, speculated about the desires of Henry Ford’s potential customers. Same as courage, it also takes a vision to bring a product from a mere idea and see it through the storm. P.S. There’s no reliable evidence it was Henry Ford’s quote.

Ralf Speth quote card about bad design costing more than good design, on purple

The costs are high for a bad design

Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover was onto something when said this. Even I sometimes wish that people first go through a cheap and lousy design only to realise the importance of a great one. In this fast-changing world, there’s no time to cut corners. You may win in the short term, but the marathon is always won by people who invested fully into it.

Charles Eames quote card about recognising the need as the first condition of design, on indigo

Design satisfies a need

Charles Eames, a furniture designer, meant that before there is any design, there is a problem that needs to be solved. And great design evolves around it.

Don Norman quote card about design being how things work and how people interact with technology, on pink

Design is more than how it looks

The quote was take from Don Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things. Knowing how things work will allow you to create human products that can be easily used by anyone.

Tim Cook quote card about a great product being how its features work together, not a list of them, on indigo

What is a great product

The CEO of Apple tries to continue the mantra that Steve Jobs established during his time at Apple. And it is: a product is everything we come in touch with. Whether it is the package, the sounds it makes, the smell, etc. We also call it User Experience.

Paula Scher quote card about growing through mistakes, on yellow

08. Making mistakes

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter, and educator. Her quote suggests that mistakes are a part of living. You need to make them in order to change.

Ed Catmull quote card about a brilliant team mattering more than a good idea, on peach

Design is about finding the best solution

Sometimes you start with an idea in mind that this will be your product. But once you take it from iteration to iteration, you realise that the output is different. And it is a good thing. A great product is ever evolving and adapting. What is great today will be obsolete tomorrow. So don’t romanticise what you have been working on, have the guts to throw it in the trash if it does not work and move on.

Joe Sparano quote card about good design being obvious and great design being transparent, on violet

Transparency in design

Companies have to create products that people want and customers are going to help them make that decision — and that means quality, imagination and transparency.

Joel Spolsky quote card about design adding value faster than it adds cost, on green

Design adds value

Joel Spolsky is a web programmer, writer, and the creator of Trello. His take on design is that when it’s done well, products become more valuable, but don’t necessarily have to be more expensive.

Robert Greenberg quote card about making infinitely complex things simpler and understandable, on purple

Great design is about simplicity

Mr. Greenberg, the chairman and chief executive of R/GA. Because of advances in technology and communication, we’re surrounded by information we see and hear. Overload is a huge issue. Mr. Greenberg said in an interview for NY Times that things are getting more complex. We get cluttered on a daily basis with new products and solutions and the ultimate goal will be to take all this clutter and simplify it.Create something truly useful that does not beg for your time but comes natural to us.

Tim Brown quote card about where, how and what you innovate all being design problems, on indigo

Great design is innovation

Tim Brown, gave an interview to Fast Company where he mentioned that design has become equal to innovation. You can’t talk anymore about being an innovative company without bringing design to the table. When you bring design thinking into that strategic discussion, you introduce a powerful tool. And the goal of design thinking is to broaden your perspective and help you grow and stay relevant.

Bruce Nussbaum quote card about talk of innovation really meaning design, on pink

Innovation = Design

This quote brings design to the forefront, and makes it an apparent need in everyday life rather than being an afterthought and only something that makes things look nice.

Steve Jobs quote card about design as the soul of a product, showing through its outer layers, on indigo

Good design is a reflection of us

Our soul craves for good design. That’s why sometimes when you use a product you feel it is a great one. Why? Because it is a reflection of who we are and what we need. Trying to get to that state with our products is one of the ultimate goals of design.

Ben Shneiderman quote card about an interface being worth a thousand pictures, on yellow

A good user interface speaks for itself

When you design a great user interface with the bare minimum, only with things necessary to your customers, you are giving room to great design. But once you clutter it with useless elements, you lose the notion of great design.

Lindo Leader quote card about simplicity and clarity as the source of great design, on yellow

Simplicity & Clarity

Lindon Leader is a graphic designer and the creator of the award-winning FedEx logo. This quote is informative and tells you two of the most important things in design. Simplicity & clarity is not achieved that quickly, but through an ongoing iteration until it becomes evident to anyone that it is clear and straightforward. Even to someone without a design background.

Bob Baxley quote card about visual design being problem solving, not personal opinion, on violet

Solve problems through design

Once again we realise that design is not how it looks, but first and foremost is how it thinks, works and feels.

Ben Shneiderman quote card about needing Leonardo da Vinci’s unity of art, science, aesthetics and engineering again, on orange

Good design is about combining

Nowadays when we need inspiration, we go to Dribbble or Behance. We search for colours, fonts or UI patterns that can be adapted to our own products. But we forget that people like Leonardo Da Vinci did not have these resources and they emersed themselves into history, art and science. There lays the answer to your question and the future you are looking for.

Mary Lou Cook quote card about creativity as inventing, taking risks, breaking rules and having fun, on coral

Creativity is having fun by taking risks

Mary Lou Cook was an actress, singer, and dancer. This quote on creativity leaves no stones unturned, and encourages everyone to live life to the fullest in everything we do.

Paul Rand quote card about everything being design, on purple

Design is everywhere

Do I need to add anything else? ;)

Massimo Vignelli quote card about a designer’s life being a fight against ugliness, on sky blue

Fight against the ugliness

Not to confuse ugliness with the visual aspect of a product. Vignelli had a deeper meaning. He meant that we need to strive for creating great products that are aesthetically pleasing and physically solving a problem. Products that fail to achieve those 2 goals is what Vignelli calls — ugliness.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote card about perfection coming when there is nothing left to take away, on plum

Good design is obvious

Nowadays it seems that we are doing everything vice versa. It is especially noticeable in the tech industry. We keep adding features only to clutter it with unnecessary stuff that confuses our consumers.

R. Buckminster Fuller quote card about thinking only of solving the problem, never of beauty, on indigo

Don’t be blinded by beauty

Every day you are going to come up with new ideas that are great. But can you imagine a real-life situation where this matters? That’s where many ideas fail. Don’t be blinded by the output first. Start with a pen and words. Iterate on your story, then build something great.

Frank Lloyd Wright quote card about form and function being one, not form following function, on peach

Good design is form and function

Frank Lloyd Wrightwas an architect, interior designer, writer and educator. Same as in architecture, in software design, the functionality should come only after the design is ready but not ignored. This principle can be applied to any field of design.

Hans Hofmann quote card about simplifying by cutting the unnecessary so the necessary can speak, on violet

Good design is about striping off the unecessary

It is challenging to make a product continually better without screwing up. So you have to clearly understand how people use it to be able to improve it.

Steve Jobs quote card about focus groups, and people not knowing what they want until you show them, on green

Focus groups don’t work

They never work. Why? Because people know they are being tested and all you get is a biased answer. They are cautious not to make a mistake. Then once you launch it in real life, it hits rock bottom. Because products tested in a lab is nothing compared to real life.Or as I call it, a product must resist a stress moment.

Paul Rand quote card about simplicity being a by-product of a good idea, not the goal, on purple

Simplicity is a by-product

When you work towards simplicity, you become blinded by a subjective goal. The same as with beauty. Because it all starts with an idea, and simplicity comes from a continuous work on it.

Thomas Watson, Jr. quote card about great design helping a great product reach its potential but never saving a bad one, on yellow

Good design is a gateway

Design is what enables great products to take the leap and get noticed from the clutter.

Steve Jobs quote card about customers wanting something new by the time you build what they asked for, on violet

Good design is about vision

Here is where many of us fail. Because when 200 people tell you that they need that feature, you give it to them. You would be a fool not to. You start feeling the pressure. But then it ends up as a failure. We as customers are bad at knowing what we want because we are lead by emotions and not logic. Your job as a designer is to figure out what we really want and need.

Justin Kan quote card about keeping product design meetings small, on orange

Eliminate the noise

Another critical part of the design is that you do design and not talk design. You don’t merely stay for hours in meeting rooms and debate and strategise about design thinking. Design is about going in the field and working on your product or idea.

Walter Isaacson quote card about aiming for Museum of Modern Art quality by keeping everything simple, on coral

Good design is aiming to create a classic

How do you create a classic work? It all starts with the desire to create a classic work. The rest is pain and tears of hard work.

Jesse James Garrett quote card about effective communication being key to a product’s success, on peach

Good design is communication

Communicating your ideas to the team is a crucial part of the equation of making a great product. Once you have the internal communication ready, you should work on how your product communicates to your customers.

Peter Morville quote card about good houses needing an understanding of both materials and people, on violet

Good design is about understanding the details

Have you ever seen how architects plan and design a house? They don’t think of what kind of tiles will go into the shower or what brand of the dishwasher to put in the kitchen until they figured out who is going to live in that house. Then they combine both the knowledge of people and the vision for the house to create a place where you can feel at home. Every architect knows that the details will only complicate the process, so that’s why they leave it for later.

Forrester Research quote card about business success depending on the whole customer experience, on green

Great design improves the customer experience

Most of the customer experience comes from the interaction with your product. It is a crucial element for any company, so cutting corners will only harm your business.

Adam Judge quote card about there being no such thing as no design, only good or bad, on purple

Bonus: There Is Always Design

Adam Judge is the author of two design books, ‘The Little Black Book of Design’ and ‘The Little Blue Book of Design’. This quote shows that everything is designed. No matter if it is good or bad, someone somewhere took the time to make it.

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