TIBOR KALMAN

Good designers are no longer satisfied in taking the manuscript from someone and making it look nice. One of the things that I've tried to do is move from being a designer to a content provider.

Let's face it: we live at a time when government is less and less powerful, less and less effective, and the agent of social change, at least for the immediate future, is the corporation.

Pictures are so good at giving people information that they're not looking for.

I'm not as good a writer as I'd like to be; therefore, I like to use images to tell stories.

I use contrary-ism in every part of my life.

I'm always trying to turn things upside down and see if they look any better.

Edits are very important to me - they're the way in which I work on everything.

If someone is going to permit me to make a publication that is politically and culturally progressive and not tell me to put their favorite movie stars on the cover, if I get to do what I want in an honest way - as I did in the beginning at 'Colors' - then I'm going to do it.

I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability. That's what we really pay attention to anyway. We don't talk about planes flying; we talk about them crashing.

I like being a 10-year-old kid who's in charge.

No matter what your cultural sophistication or what language you speak, everyone can understand images.

We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right.

The difference between good design and great design is intelligence.

I'm not against beauty; it just sounds boring to me.

By definition, when you make something no one hates, no one loves it.

I believe that this whole question of some photography being true and some untrue is a non-question. Photography is not objective; it never was objective.

Design is just language and the real issue is what you use that language to do.

We don't talk about planes flying. We talk about them crashing.

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I’m interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are.

If you don't have an idea, all you have is style.

Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will leave. You'll miss them forever.

The perfect state of creative bliss is having power (you are 50) and knowing nothing (you are 9). This assures an interesting and successful outcome.

Some people... cling to the idea that the photograph is an inherently real or honest image and as such is always on a different plane from an obviously subjective form of visual communication such as painting.

You'll never go wrong when you work with someone smarter than you.

Consumer culture is contradiction in terms