Mohsen Makhmalbaf Quotes

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.

I look at graphic design as communication, meaning that the work has to have a vibe to connect to the viewer or perceiver. I make a black and white drawing and then add color digitally, bringing in a contemporary pattern to the composition to create a vibrance.

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

It's a visual world and people respond to visuals.

I did television for a very long time, but if you're on television, words don't count. What the eye sees beats the words. If you switch sides, from radio to television, you learn that the wordiness that you learn on the radio is useless or not nearly as powerful, and you have to learn to trust that the eye will just beat the ear.

I'm personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.

One picture is worth a thousand words.

“One picture is worth a thousand words,” said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it.

To me, graphic T-shirts are the most important and most expressive format for a designer or a person. Your taste in graphic tees says a lot about your point of view.

Our band has always been really big on imagery. We've kind of used that as one of our strengths; we tend to do that pretty well.

The language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction.

Style is the perfection of a point of view.

Images have a unique power to impart that which is beyond words.

Image plays a huge part in my music and in my lifestyle.

The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.

I sometimes feel that a pattern is almost a fashion statement in itself.

The image is an image.

The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they'll understand the music.

I'm fascinated with what an audience will take away from an image.

I think people remember pictures not dialogue. That's why I like pictures.

Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don't know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.

When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go 'I need to write a book. What's a good question?' It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for 'What It Is,' it was this idea of 'What is an image?'