John Maeda Quotes

Good design doesn't date.

My own style is pretty classic; I much prefer to design for others.

When you buy things that are expensive, like a sofa or something that really feels like an investment, you need to keep it as plain as possible, as simple as possible. Make sure that it's a clean design that will work with whatever style you want it to.

Good design doesn't date. Bad design does.

If you watched companies such as Sony and Samsung grow, they focused first on features and then on industrial design, which made their products look and feel better.

The principal and only way to make an heirloom product is to design something that people will need not just this year, but for the next 50 or 100 years.

Perhaps I'd like to design cars, but I don't think I'd be much good at it.

My goal wasn't to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.

A Joan Crawford dress looks really good on an hourglass figure.

I love the '60s and sort of wish all design had stopped in 1967. That would be my dream. They were really just nailing it - everyone looked great - but then it started getting a bit slippery after that.

My background was in graphic design, but when I was doing it, it was all hand-drawn stuff, not computers.

I've been combing through the Wolverine archives and advertisements from the sixties and seventies. I'm looking to take inspiration from designs of the past and bring them into the future.

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

Some people design buildings and aircraft carriers and cars - and I designed picks.

My aesthetic is pretty classic. I like to keep things simple but appreciate the details.

Everything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.

Rooms should be timeless.

In every interior my firm and I design, we are always reaching for vintage pieces, and materials that feel classic and timeless. It's how I feel about fashion as well, and definitely one of the intentions I had when designing the layette collection. I'm not a fan of trends.

Styles come and go, design goes on forever: solving communication problems with new tools applied to the same old common sense.

The designers [of the 1930s] were populists, you see; they were trying to give the public what it wanted. What the public wanted was the future.

Any design, any city, any kind of craziness or tragedy, it all comes from a long time of preparation.

A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time, never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature.

There is no "era" of simple, focused, concept-driven identity design. There is only design that grows out of understanding audiences for specific problems, and that evolves from an idea. This is an approach that does not depend on any specific time period or its technology.

[Industrial design in 50 years] will be less about looks and more about personality of artifacts.

You can never design the best city, but you can design the best city you know how to design at this time.