Toyo Ito Quotes

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

Design should be easy in the sense that every step should be obviously and clearly identifiable. Simplify elements to make change simple so you can manage the technical risk.

Keeping it simple for the consumer is incredibly dire.

Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can't imagine any other way.

Great architecture of the past was always clear. SFMOMA is still a simple building to understand.

The K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle was pounded into my head in school and I still follow it today in most of my designs. I know that my most successful efforts are the simplest. I always find myself trying to subtract detail from design concepts in an attempt to distill the idea down to the most basic communication tool.

I've been working on a graphic about carbon emissions. It's an incredibly simple graphic - a bunch of blocks and a table below it - but it's taken me three weeks to design. For some reason it just wasn't working. Then finally I realized there was a number present, which I was rendering in each version, that wasn't necessary for the understanding of the piece. This figure was getting in the way and distracting from the main flow of the narrative. As soon as I pulled that graphic out of the design, it sprang into focus. Suddenly it worked.

Good design makes a product understandable.

"Simple" is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn't always mean total reduction, or minimalism - sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step.

Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible.

Mies van der Rohe's architecture and modern architecture in general suffered from not only being repetitive, but not explaining to the populous what the different rooms were for.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.

Does anyone recall hippies designing things for Generation X? Does anyone recall the elegance of that? How design was about making things simpler?

Shaker pieces were not to show off. One was not to waste energy to decorate.

The best things - when I really feel that I'm communicating, and when I really feel that people are getting it - are simple, straightforward recipes. I think simple is the hardest to achieve because you don't have all those elements to hide behind.

I love white, I love black. For me, sometimes, it's nice to play with colors, but when you're too busy to think and you've got so much in your mind, sometimes all you need is a bare uniform.

When a device as simple as a door has to come with an instruction manual—even a one-word manual—then it is a failure, poorly designed.

Picasso said that no one has to explain a daffodil. Good design is understandable to virtually everybody. You never have to ask why.

The prime reason the Google homepage is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact, it was noted that the SUBMIT button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.

It takes a lot of effort to make a building look effortless.

Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective.

Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product.

I'd make my whole collection with just one square of fabric. I wouldn't do anything else; everything had to be made from one square. This is just one example.