John Maeda Quotes

Some digital natives are extraordinarily savvy.

I love the energy and the knowledge. I barely know how to use this thing [mobile phone]. I get by.

We can do it better, more consistently, and in the end, it will cost us less because the students that we produce will be superior to those without technology experience.

Even many of the teenagers who feel confident on navigating the web simply don't have the skills needed to 'write and create' digital tools, not simply consume them.

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

The proper study of mankind is the science of design.

I didn't think that personal style had much value in graphic design.

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.

Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's all.

It is most necessary to avoid rusticity in any way, whether in material, design, or execution.

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

Everyday people are not very good designers.

I don't pretend to be a digital savant or even a digital apprentice.

Great French design is often about unexpected touches.

My abilities on the computer are limited pretty much to iTunes and YouTube. I check my email as much as anybody, but I'm more old-fashioned in a certain sense.

The vast majority of Americans perform sophisticated digital tasks on a daily basis. Grandmas and grandpas e-mail digital photos of their cruise trip and IM their kids in school. So a politician admitting that he or she can't bother to learn those things indicates a horse-and-buggy mentality.

I can use most of the tools that every American teenager can master. Maybe not all of them.

Architects think that beauty is a crime.

I'm a bit of a digital imbecile.

I feel triumphant when our moms can use Airbnb without their technically inclined kids.

I believe that one of the most powerful things of all is aesthetics.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.

Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.