Design Feast Series: Quotes

“Prejudices must be broken down, ruts avoided, and new paths or old forgotten ones explored if the artist is to perform one of [her or] his most important functions, that of broadening our visual world.”

Paul Rand, Designer and Author

“Blogging forces you to write down your arguments and assumptions. This is the single biggest reason to do it, and I think it alone makes it worth it.”

Gabriel Weinberg, Founder of DuckDuckGo and Angel Investor

“You just have to maintain the same point of view, to keep on believing what you believed in the beginning. … one should be patient and loyal to what you feel, to what you think, and to the message that you’d like to convey to your audience.”

Dardenne Brothers, Filmmakers

“I think that joy of having something in your head and then seeing it become real is an ‘aha’. It’s like a high. You want to do it again, to get better at it, or prolong it. I still get that way when a project launches. There’s the excitement and then the release, which can lead to backlash, praise, or people actually using something and getting value out of it in a tangible way.”

Chris Glass, Designer

“Everything you do as a business includes multiple choices for your customers. It doesn’t matter if you give them the choices—they have the choices. Features, benefits, prices, promises, support, etc. They can love it, hate it, be indifferent, etc. But they can also be confused. And ‘I’m confused’ is the worst option of all. If your customers are confused, you’re in deep trouble. ‘I give up, unhappily’ is next.

This is what clarity is all about. It’s about eliminating ‘I’m confused’ answers. Lots of people think simplicity is the opposite of confusion (‘It’s confusing, let’s make this simpler’). It’s not. The opposite of confusion is clarity.”

Jason Fried, Co-Founder and President of 37signals

“You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every ‘overnight success’ is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.”

Chris Dixon, Co-Founder and CEO of Hunch, and Co-Founder of Founder Collective

“A product is just a means to an end. Sometimes, the more the product disappears, the better the design is.”

Gianfranco Zaccai, President and CEO of Design Continuum

“I’d like to talk about the one thing that’s been consistent over the years—the genesis and power of creativity, the power of the songwriter, or let’s say composer, or just creator. So whether you’re making dance music, Americana, rap music, electronica, it’s all about how you’re putting what you do together. The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips, there is no right way, no pure way of doing it, there’s just doing it. We live in a post-authentic world, and today, authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history. At the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters.”

Bruce Springsteen, Singer, Songwriter, Performer

“…I was a firm believer that a great image can come only from a well-prepared production. But then I saw more and more work that wasn’t made like that—I realized it’s possible to take beautiful pictures out of any situation as long as you know what you’re looking for.”

Adrian Samson, Photographer

“The most important thing I learned is to keep your head down and just work as hard as you can. Be humble and try to learn as much as possible from the people you admire. You can’t control whether or not your work will receive accolades and glory, so it’s best not to get distracted by that kind of stuff. You have to focus on the present and keep trying to improve the work itself.”

David Gelb, Director of Documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”

“Since I first picked up the violin, I’ve been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin. To this day, I’m still very interested in the range, palette and colors that I have to work with.”

Andrew Bird, Multi-Instrumentalist, Lyricist, Whistler

“It’s not about being anti-screen. It’s about recognizing that some of the great things we’ve done on the screen have been because we were inspired by something off of it. Our experiences in the world aren’t just fodder for future screen material, though. They are much deeper than that. They build a worldview, a sense for what reality is, which is what contains every point of reference to the things we create. If we spend too much time in the ‘screen world,’ then the feedback loop from source to creation will quickly run out of original material. It’s as if you were to make copies of an image from a copy, rather than the original. Eventually, the image would degrade so badly as to be unrecognizable. Given enough time, it would disappear entirely. Ideas have entropy too.”

Christopher Butler, Vice President of Newfangled Web Developers

“‘Comics’ connects you to an old and long tradition that I may be part of but I am also working in opposition to. So the form needs a new name. Some people call it a graphic novel, but all novels are graphic. Otherwise you couldn’t see them. They use typography. My idea is to call it ‘autographic writing.’ I am a writer, but I am interested in my handwriting. Most writers don’t want to preserve their handwriting. They choose to set their words in mechanical type, so all traces of physicality are gone. In my writing, I want to preserve my handwriting, and my handwriting includes writing words and images. So that’s probably a better name. And are all “comics” comical? Well, in the ones that strive to be amusing the humor eventually becomes dated. Is ‘Krazy Kat’ mainly of interest because it’s funny? It’s very amusing, but there’s a lot more than laughter going on while I’m reading it.”

Ben Katchor, Cartoonist

“Well, that’s what life is—this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.”

Alexander Payne, Film Director

“The hierarchy of information interaction is this: Immediacy, Accuracy, Fidelity. When interacting with information you want it to be fast, then you want it to be accurate, and then you want it to be exactly what was originally expressed.”

Guy English, Writer of software for iPhone and Macintosh

“The benefits of doing what you love are widely touted. It’s the golden carrot of our web-enabled age. But when you consider what to do for a living, you also have to weigh the cost of doing what you love, every day.

To clarify, doing what you love doesn’t mean you love every single aspect of a profession. Every job has drudgery. When I say doing what you love, I mean you wake up in the morning looking forward to going to do whatever it is you do to provide for yourself [and your family]. And you feel that way 9 days out of 10.

Back to the cost then. It’s simply this: when you do what you love, it can often lead to being all that you do. It’s what you think about when you wake up, when you’re in the shower, in the moments of peace and quiet, and as you close your eyes at the end of the day.

As far as work is concerned, that’s not a bad thing. But you have to realize that other areas of your life will pay the cost. There may be hobbies like woodworking, gardening or cycling that interest you, but you never get around to picking up. There are the missed family events. Or, even worse, you’re present in body only, your mind on the ‘thing you love’.

Being a spouse, a parent, a congregant—these things all take time and energy. Doing what you love for a job so easily takes over your thought life, everything else can get lip service only.”

Chris Bowler, Designer and Founder of Fusion Ads

“In a connected world, countries, governments and companies also have character, and their character—‘how’ they do what they do, ‘how’ they keep promises, ‘how’ they make decisions, ‘how’ things really happen inside, ‘how’ they connect and collaborate, ‘how’ they engender trust, ‘how’ they relate to their customers, to the environment and to the communities in which they operate—is now their fate.”

Dov Seidman, Author and CEO of LRN

“The main purpose of typography is to make life easier for your readership by making it easier to read what you’ve written.”

Billy Whited, User Experience Craftsman at 8th Light

“So don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know everything. The next time you’re asked how things are going with your company or what your plans are for the future, drop that ‘everything is better than ever!’ party line, and share more honest feedback, including what you’re still trying to figure out. You’re likely to garner more support and ideas that way—and probably more respect, too.”

Adelaide Lancaster, Co-Author of “The Big Enough Company: Creating a Business that Works for You”

“Through the medium of the book, the musician, architect, painter, engineer, industrialist, scientist and writer may become permanently articulate. Here they meet on common ground.”

Merle Armitage, Book Designer

“What’s authentic is love for what I do. Authentic is what was the composer’s intention, and I need to get there. It’s more interesting to have a wider range of tastes and perspective. My singing teacher says, ‘Every classic[al] music singer should sing musical comedy, should sing a little bit of musicals, a little bit of pop, to express this.’”

Andreas Scholl, Countertenor

“Going for it doesn’t guarantee success. But to me, that’s not entirely the point. I want to take risks, try new things, and continue to build and create. If I was guaranteed to succeed then it wouldn’t be called a risk. And if I waited for the can’t-fail moment, then I would never try anything new. The key is discerning what’s worth going for and what’s worth shelving.”

Shawn Blanc, Writer at shawnblanc.net

“Your view speaks to one of the great strengths of photography—to convey objective information—as the camera can faithfully record whatever is in front of the lens. Knowing more about the location and history of the image can also allow one to insert information that is not included within the frame of the photograph and thus fill in its narrative blanks. Interestingly too a photograph, because of its detailed nature, often contains much more information than originally intended.

My interest is in looking at the intent of the photographer as well, to read whatever story he is telling with the available material, to try to navigate the photographer’s cultural filters versus my own and finally to see how these are affected over time and space.”

Susan Lipper, Photographer

“I’ve always lived within my means. I’ve never been in debt in my life. I refuse to because I know the minute I’m in debt, I’m then at somebody else’s behest, and it’s the way Hollywood works. Hollywood is very good about getting everybody out there to live richly. So they’re all in debt. They’ve got mortgages, and they have to keep churning out whatever Hollywood wants them to make. And I can’t do that.”

Terry Gilliam, Film Director

“I can’t prove that good software respects people, but I can look at good software and show how it respects people. I can look at bad software and show how it doesn’t respect people.”

Brent Simmons, Mac, iPad, and iPhone Software Developer

“There’s a certain energy that a start-up has that’s like lightning in a bottle, but companies lose it over time as they get mired in their own systems. So how do you hold on to that? How do you keep companies in that start-up mode? It’s the programming aspect of it; it’s figuring out where all the different groups need to be.”

Primo Orpilla, Principal of Studio O+A

“To me a great piece is a sequence of memorable sentences. And I know that’s a sort of limiting thing. Maybe that’s why I can’t write effective narratives! But for me a wonderful epigrammatic sentence, an effective aphorism, that for me is like seeing a pregnant woman, it’s the perfectly shaped thing, pregnant sentences.

And then paragraph structure fascinates me, too. One of the things that drives me nuts when I’m reading even good academic writing is that nobody seems to have ever heard that sentence variation is a vital part of writing. These are people who are perfectly competent in every other ways, but every sentence is the same shape.

In the end though, you either can produce surprising, beautiful sentences or you can’t. Without that, all the erudition and intelligence in the world is not going to make any difference. For me, yes, a piece works when I can say that there are six good sentences in it. And a piece that does not have any good sentence is not worth reading. Now, having said that, of course I struggle over weeks and pull my hair to work on the structure, to make it logical, and move paragraphs around so that the sequence flows. All that stuff matters, too. But if I am answering honestly, yes, it’s the sentence that matters.”

Adam Gopnik, Author

“Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion.”

Marilyn Johnson, Author

“Coming to know the difference between obvious, easy, and possible takes a lot of practice, deep thinking, critical analysis, and, often, debate. It’s a constant learning process. It helps you figure out what really matters.

But once you’re able to see the buckets clearly, and you begin to think about things in terms of obvious, easy, and possible instead of high, medium, and low priority, you’re on your way to building better products.”

Jason Fried, Co-Founder of 37signals

“Design is only one part of the puzzle: savor the discussion, development, debate, and dissemination of your work just as much as the making of it.”

Rob Giampietro, Principal at Project Projects

“In a smaller store … you are the person making the choices to get really good books. You are the one who, by your intelligent ordering and good reading, is sort of cutting through a lot of the junk and bringing books that people really want to read. …We’ve all had the experience of going into a three-story Barnes & Noble and saying, ‘I didn’t really find anything I wanted read.’ But you can go in to a small store with an intelligent staff …[and] well-displayed, well-chosen books, and come out with five books that you’re dying to read. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Ann Patchett, Author and Co-Owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville

“But for me, successful writing has usually been a case of having found good conditions for real, effortless concentration.”

Ted Hughes, Poet

“Like the example of the toy robot that delights the child, Siri delights with simple competence. …So over time it will take on more tasks and will eventually help us in ways that we cannot yet conceive possible today. This is just like the introduction of the capacitive touch screen. Popularizing the touch screen has led to experiences with phones and tablets which we did not think possible four years ago.

But it takes time. Like any truly useful breakthrough, it takes a long time to mature. And also like any disruption, the potential of Siri is rooted in four principles:

Humble early goals which it accomplishes well

A large population of enthusiastic adopters who give it sustenance

Plenty of headroom in improvement giving it areas to grow into with positive feedback

A patient sponsor who makes a stable living

There’s no magic to it. In fact it’s banal. These are only the principles that every parent uses to raise a child.”

Horace Dediu, Founder and Author of blog Asymco

“Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy. I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don’t get bored. I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.”

Haruki Murakami, Author

“Never underestimate enthusiasm and passion. Because if you are enthusiastic about an idea, and you just keep doing it, the success will come.”

Tina Roth Eisenberg, Designer and Founder of Swissmiss Journal and Studio

“I was with a friend the other day who is planning to build an awesome new service that I would use and pay for—it solves a real problem, it scales, the market is right for it. I desperately want him to prototype that service—I want him to see where his thinking is off, how some user/testers will actually use it, how web technology can’t scale to this problem. I want him to know where he is right and wrong in his thinking.

This step—the expression step—is just that, a step. It’s interim, it’s likely to never see the light of day. But it is the most important, and the hardest one.

Because it takes something limitless and subjects it to real life constraints, the point between idea and execution can last a lifetime. But without moving onto the expression, there is nothing.”

Andrew Weissman, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of betaworks

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”

Samuel Johnson, Author

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon

“It is our ability to apply our ideas and their embodiment in code to a dizzying array of problems, from the prosaic to the profound, that attracts and compels us. It is why we compute.”

Daniel Reed, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research

“The loss of people writing—writing a composition, a letter or a report—is not just the loss for the record. It’s the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t [writing]. And that’s a handicap. People [I research] were writing letters every day. That was calisthenics for the brain.”

David McCullough, Historian

“Inspiration is a by-product of discipline ... simply getting up everyday and planning, plotting, sketching, setting up or actually applying paint to a painting.”

Beverly Claridge, Artist

“Doing collage was not ever something I thought about a few years ago, but now I see it as a natural, logical movement from the kinds of abstract erasure paintings (over Wonder Woman comics) I was doing in college. Now I think about collage as a good way to paint and draw with paper (appropriating color and line), and it’s freeing. Combining collage with prints allows me to release lots of independent visual problems I’m working out in my head. As a writer, I also connect the process of making a collage very closely with writing, particularly poetry. I’ve been writing poetry over the last year or so, and I formulate these small groupings of images in a similar way that I create phrases and words in a poem.”

Julia Vodrey Hendrickson, Visual Artist, Writer, Curator

“Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them.”

Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research

“In the business world, and especially in the technology industry, we focus a lot on the functional requirements of raising money, or on the technical requirements of having certain features or technological capabilities. What I’ve found, though, is that being part of an active, ambitious, supportive and diverse community of peers is just as valuable, if not more so, than any of the more prosaic prerequisites for success. That’s even true in this photo—some of the people whom I met in person for the first time that night or that weekend have gone on to become among my closest friends, the biggest supporters of my work, and have ventured their formidable social capital to support my career. An even more diverse community of others whom I met at similar dinners or other events have played a similar role as well. Yet, at the time this photo was taken, I don’t think any of these people had ever taken venture capital money for any project they’d ever done—everyone here had bootstrapped their way to the table.

So, it’s easy to focus on the money or the little technological accomplishments, but I am glad I found these old pictures as a nice reminder that we should set aside time for a great meal with smart friends every once in a while. If it’s not enough enticement that you’re just having a good time, you can also justify it as one of the most worthwhile investments you can make in your future success.”

Anil Dash, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Geek

“Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

Stephen Fry, Actor, Writer

“It is noteworthy when the design of an experience is so compelling that you feel wonder and delight. When designed right it feels totally natural, some might even say it is truly ‘intuitive.’ No training is needed, no set-up, no break in flow, the tool fits seamlessly, improving without disrupting your experience; it’s like a little bit of magic.”

Stefan Klocek, Principal Interaction Designer at Cooper

“It’s true that various media require differing degrees of commitment—releasing files to a printer is a nail-biter of a moment for many of us; the same with anything relatively permanent such as signage. There’s a retail store on Broadway that makes me cringe every time I walk by: ‘Damn, I should’ve made that logo a little smaller; definitely should have tightened up the letterspacing between that I and A.’ And perhaps it’s because most of my projects of late have been web-based products that I find myself missing the idea of designing in a way that involves some degree of finality—of synthesizing all inputs to arrive not at a solution, but ‘the’ solution—one that inspires conviction. And holding myself accountable when I ultimately fail, but learning in a way that affects me at my core.

It used to be that designers shared the company of photographers and filmmakers, hired for a particular expertise or point of view and responsible for a discrete product that, once unleashed in the world, could never be changed. Increasingly though, especially among practitioners who work in more fluid media such as web or mobile, a designer’s perspective is overshadowed by a prevailing ethos of an iterative approach: ‘If it doesn’t work, we can always change it.’ Many designers embrace this; who hasn’t wished for a Command + Z to apply to real life? We could save ourselves the occasional professional misstep, a lot of heartache, and healthy amounts of humiliation. But when the stakes are high, being confronted with evidence of your mistakes makes it that much easier to learn from them.

In the start-up world, there’s a widely held belief that if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve waited too long to release it. Similarly, I’ve heard colleagues remind me time and time again that Perfect is the Enemy of Good. But to aspire to anything less won’t do us any favors either.

Keep a drawer of your mistakes. But design like there’s no tomorrow.”

Mimi O Chun, Design Director of General Assembly

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the [individual] who points out how the strong [individual] stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the [individual] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who knows great enthusiasm, great devotion and the triumph of achievement and who, at the worst, if [s/he] fails, at least fails while doing greatly—so that [their] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States

“It’s hard to fathom for someone not wanting to do their own thing. …Half the battle is just starting something and showing up. So many people talk themselves out of everything. You can ‘what if’ yourself to death. Just start moving. Start putting one foot in front of the other. And work really hard. There aren’t short-cuts. There’s nothing easy. We worked our asses off. I work my ass off now. I don’t have to work my ass off, but I’m still doing it because there are no short-cuts. Just show up and start working, and sometimes good things can happen.”

Matt Tanase, Co-Founder of Slicehost

“To act, that is true intelligence. I will be what I want to be. But I have to want whatever that is. Success means being successful, not just having the potential for success. Any large area of land has the potential to be a palace, but where’s the palace if no one builds there?”

Fernando Pessoa, Poet