Eva Zeisel Quotes

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

Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability - they should go hand in hand.

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.

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.

Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.

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

The difference between good design and great design is intelligence.

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

When I'm designing, I'm thinking about what it would be like to wear that piece.

Design is everything.

Define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.

I have a lot to learn from designers.

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.

Before computers, you'd start designing using shapes of cubes. Now I can start with something like a handkerchief, an object that doesn't have strong inside and outside boundaries or much closed volume.

I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation and lays it down, and that's it. But that's not me.

Design is an unknown.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.

I always tend to think, even in residential projects, about what a space is being asked to do - where is it located, what are the circumstances, where can I attack the problem, so to speak. How can you create a narrative for people moving through it? How can you convey its character?

Who I am as an architect and the history of my work - that's clear to anybody who hires me. But I come in literally with nothing in my brain about what the building will look like.

Form and function are a unity, two sides of one coin. In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created.

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.

I really don't care what I look like as long as it fits with the thing I'm working on.

I wish you didn't have to design so often. Try to do quality and cut down on quantity. I think fashion is very, very important.

What got me really excited about Tylko is the fact that it bridges the gap between tradition and technology. It expands the designer's ability to create a language, to create ideas, to create a set of proportions, a set of details, and to apply those across a really wide range of applications.