Walter Isaacson Quotes

The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

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.

We have a passion for keeping things simple.

"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.

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.

My most-used word was no! I said no to pockets, no to zippers, no to extra loops. In the end, all the products were so slim and light.

A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It's close to being functionally flawless - like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google's home page.

I like to keep things classic, not lavish or blinged out. I don't even say that word. The last thing I want to be is over the top.

I think there is always a need for pure design. With pure design, you don't need so much decoration.

A formally harmonious product needs no decoration; it should be elevated through pure form.

I don't particularly follow the Bauhaus school of design, where you make everything into a black box - simplify it.

I like sparseness. There's something about that minimalist feel that can make something have an immediate impact and make it unique. I'll probably always work with that formula; I just don't know how.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

I have my own definition of minimalism, which is that which is created with a minimum of means.

I never wanted to be the face of the brand. You haven't seen me in my own ads. You don't see my logo all over my clothes. From the beginning, I wanted the clothes to stand on their own.

Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

Stick to primary colors.

The iPod Shuffle was something unique for Apple: a device stripped down to a single function.

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

Spare functional furniture, in my opinion, is the genius of 20th-century design.

Simplicity is key. Some people like really high-tech kitchens, where you have warming drawers and ice makers and storage for a million different things. Honestly, for me, I need an oven, a stove top, a fridge and a sink.

People say I am a classic designer. I don't try to be classic, but I do try to be simple and elegant.

The little black dress is the hardest thing to realize because you must keep it simple.

Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.

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.