Yves Behar Quotes

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. It's the experience that makes it good design.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.

I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design.

I design for real people. I think of our customers all the time. There is no virtue whatsoever in creating clothing or accessories that are not practical.

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

My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.'

The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.

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

Things that are ultimately complex must have a simple end user experience if they are to be successful.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

We always correct people who say, 'You're trying to make this look better.' Well yes, we want it to look better, but that's easy. The look and the function are one and the same. They are not separate. It looks good because it functions beautifully. That message is very hard.

I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people's eyes.

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable, that leave you with the sense that that's the only possible solution that makes sense.

Consumers have zero time for products that are not simple, intuitive, and attractive to use. This is especially true with Internet products, where clean and useful design is a prerequisite to keeping anyone on your site for more than 30 seconds.

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface.

Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good design means as little design as possible.

Design means being good, not just looking good.

The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.

When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.

Taken as a whole, consumer technologies have made startling advances, but they still are not as easy to use as they should be.