Chip Kidd Quotes

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design.

At Stanford, we teach 'design thinking' - that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then to apply the art of engineering to serve them.

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, and I teach it that way.

What is design? It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together.

Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era.

The design is done when the problem goes away.

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

I not only enjoy it, I think, how do you design things that are applicable to life - unless you live it?

Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution.

Architects often have a mindset where you solve a problem, so you have a set of needs that you have to address. Often I feel that my projects have to have concrete applications.

Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.

If you write your own tools, you can sort of see new things, design new things.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Health care is a design problem. Dependence on foreign oil is a design problem. To some extent, poverty is a design problem. We need design thinkers to solve those problems, and most people who are in positions of political power are not design thinkers, to put it mildly.

Often the most important moment in the design process is figuring out what the right question is.

I ended up going to do a matches program at the state for industrial design. And from there, I got hired at IDEO to joint their design team there - and basically, you are starting as an industrial designer to design products - and then kept asking the question, 'What else can design accomplish? What else can design do?'

Design is thinking made visual.

We have lots to learn in India when it comes to design, and that includes me! I'm constantly learning; that never stops.

Designers are by nature more inquisitive, more connected. They dig a little deeper in terms of insights. They turn those insights into innovation. That connection to the consumer is absolutely critical in driving innovation. It’s critical that design isn’t subjugated to the back room as a short order cook for marketing or for merchandising or sales. It has to be up front.

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end.

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

A good designer can create a design that accommodates all the constraints and still delivers an elegant, satisfying experience to the user. A great designer can go beyond this and create a design that demonstrates that some of those constraints weren’t really there to begin with.

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place.

You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.