John Maeda Quotes

Graphic Design, which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups, is not good design if it is irrelevant.

Everyday people are not very good designers.

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design.

Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.

As an artist, as I design and lay out a page, the less-important things, things I want you to spend less time looking at, I draw them very small, maybe even silhouette them. The more-important pivotal scenes, I draw them larger, maybe even a double-page spread.

My graphic design skills are superior to a lot of other things I can do; I use it as a part of my tool kit.

The other big factor in building trust quickly is site design quality. Mint.com has one of the best graphic designers ever (Jason Putorti) - he cares about every pixel, all the fonts, all the transparencies and effects. And that shows instantly. People do make judgments of trust on appearance - in the real world and online.

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea.

As a visual person, I love a creative resume. Putting in a little effort on the design side will show that you care about making things look good.

A good designer has technical knowledge - don't treat her like someone who's there to decide whether something should be pink or orange.

I love design in general, the creativity. Whether it is golf courses, my apparel line, ads we do or our business with AriZona, design is fun.

Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.

I'm an unbelievable designer.

Graphic design is a hobby that I started with back in 2010-2011, which I am still doing today. And because of that, I was able to design my own stuff and designed my own logo.

I often say that 'Design Matters' began in February 2005 with an idea and a telephone line.

I was always a design junkie.

In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.

There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color.

In the printed page the only real things are the paper and the ink; the white spaces play the same part in aiding the eye to take in the meaning of the print as do the black letters.

Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate.