Design Is Thinking Quotes & Sayings

Most people think that George Nelson, Charles Eames and Eliot Noyes invented industrial design. That is, of course, an exaggeration. George did it without any assistance from the other two. — Bill N. Lacy

Clothes can be important. I am learning this. For instance, often when I design and I wonder what is the point, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. — Miuccia Prada

Everybody's going to do the 3D slightly differently the same way that people are going to deal with color differently. Some movies downplay the color, some color is very vibrant. Color design is very different. We've got to think of 3D like color or like sound, as just part of the creative palette that we paint with and not some whole new thing that completely redefines the medium. — James Cameron

Steve Jobs did not start started Apple as a scam. But he understood early on the power of marketing. The idea of the computer as a bicycle for the human mind - I think that was something he believed. He believed in making people comfortable with these machines, which is why he spent so much time thinking about how to design them a certain way, how to make them so user-friendly and interactive, and why he spent so much time studying the Zeitgeist. — Alex Gibney

We can change our thinking. Rather than viewing the chemical adulteration of our environment and our bodies as the inevitable practice of convenience and progress, we can decide that cancer is inconvenient and toxic pollution archaic and primitive. We can start seeing the creation of carcinogens as the result of outmoded technologies. We can demand green engineering and green chemistry. We can let our systems of industry and agriculture know that they are suffering from a design flaw. — Sandra Steingraber

If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design. — Ralf Speth

Life, by which I mean my life, is a great, or probably the greatest, design, from its very beginning to its end, the end that, I think, is unlikely to exist. Each and every bit of life is a part of the design. Design exists as the consequence of the ultimate questioner's vanity. And my mission is to find the most fundamental truth, which probably and exclusively involves the nature of the existence of the ultimate questioner. — Kedar Joshi

Reflection is an underlining theme of Design Thinking. — Pearl Zhu

Gaming in general is a male thing. It isn't that gaming is designed to exclude women. Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a large female audience has failed. And I think that has to do with the different thinking processes of men and women. — Gary Gygax

thinking of API design as resource design is a very effective way to avoid thinking about hypermedia. — Leonard Richardson

Instead of thinking about addiction, it makes sense to confront this reality: We are faced with technologies to which we are extremely vulnerable and we don't always respect that fact. The path forward is to learn more about our vulnerabilities. Then, we can design technology and the environments in which we use them with these insights in mind. For example, since we know that multitasking is seductive but not helpful to learning, it's up to us to promote unitasking. — Sherry Turkle

Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well. — Martin Fowler

What I'm trying to do is bring certain of those engineering values into the design process, such that when you think about form you're already incorporating those performance criteria in the process of the generation of forms. — Neri Oxman

The most common misperception is the word 'design'. People think of primarily pretty pictures or forms. They don't understand the depth to which design goes-not only in products, but in every aspect of our life. Whether it is the design of a program, a product or some form of communication, we are living in a world that's totally designed. Somebody made a decision about everything. And it was a design decision. — Sam Farber

I don't think that anyone has really told (people) what design is. It doesn't occur to most people that everything is designed
that every building and everything they touch in the world is designed. Even foods are designed now. So in the process of helping people understand this, making them more aware of the fact that the world around us is something that somebody has control of, perhaps they can feel some sense of control, too. I think that's a nice ambition. — Bill Moggridge

The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design. — Jonathan Ive

Jay Harman is the quintessential biomimic, a principled inventor who sees solutions everywhere he looks in the natural world. And he looks deeply, with the soul of a student. He moves with grace from a world of waving sea kelp to the world of sustainable design, bringing nature's wisdom into the board rooms of global companies, to the design tables of the engineers and designers who make our world. This is more than a business book, more than a memoir, more than a new way to solve global challenges. It's a book about a new way to think. — Janine Benyus

I think psychoanalyze-pinhead is the important lesson of GNU Emacs. — Todd Bennett

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual. — Edward Tufte

Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business. — James Dyson

Some architects think of clients only as sources of work and income but most good architecture is in fact the result of successful design collaboration between a talented architect and an enlightened, motivated client. — Roger K. Lewis

Nothing dates faster than people's fantasies about the future. This is what you get when perfectly decent, intelligent and talented men start thinking in terms of space, rather than place, and about single rather than multiple meanings. It's what you get when you design for political aspirations and not real human needs. You get miles of jerry-built platonic nowhere infested with Volkswagens. — Robert Hughes

Software and hardware design is less different than software designers think, but more different than hardware designers think. — Fred Brooks

For me, the concept of design is more than object-oriented; it encompasses the design of processes, systems and institutions as well. Increasingly, we need to think about designing the types of institutions we need to get things done in this rapidly accelerating world. — John Seely Brown

Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand. — Tom Wujec

The weak and the defenseless in this world invite aggression from others. The best way we can serve peace is by removing the temptation from the path of those who think we are weak and, for that reason, they can bully or attack us. That temptation can only be removed if we make ourselves so strong that nobody dare entertain any aggressive designs against us. Pakistan has come to stay and no power on earth can destroy it — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Incrementalism can lead to local maxima. Be willing to explore to find the big wins before testing smaller changes and tweaks. Conversely, sometimes it's the incremental refinements that prove or disprove your hypotheses about what your users respond to. Use the insights from small tests to guide and inform your thinking about bigger changes. Consider entirely new alternative approaches to your principal business goals. Be willing to go beyond just testing "variations on a theme" - you might be surprised. If you're working on a major site redesign or overhaul, don't wait until the new design is live to A/B test it. A/B test the redesign itself. — Dan Siroker

I am enthusiastic over humanity's extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday's fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Designing for me is a very complex process. There are many ideas that I want to express in one object, very often contradictory. The creative process in Miu Miu is completely different from that of Prada. Miu Miu is not as complicated and thought out as Prada. Rather than being young, Miu Miu is immediate Prada is very sophisticated and considered; Miu Miu is much more naive. The solution, when I am working on Miu Miu, has to come immediately, instinctively, spontaneously with whatever is available at the moment. If I think three times, I stop. — Miuccia Prada

If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture. — Brian Foote

The hardest thing in practice is finding enough time to think about design. — John McAslan

At Stanford, we teach 'design thinking' - that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then to apply the art of engineering to serve them. — Hasso Plattner

In our whole life melody the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure, a time of sickness and disappointed plans, and makes a sudden pause in the hymns of our lives, and we lament that our voice must be silent and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of our Creator. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the rests. If we look up, God will beat the time for us. — John Ruskin

I think test-driven design is great. But you can test all you want and if you don't know how to approach the problem, you're not going to get a solution. — Peter Norvig

I think the whole thing that Jamie [Hyneman] and I have in working together is that we are constantly simplifying each other's designs, and we both appreciate that the quickest and the dirtiest solution is usually the most elegant, the least expensive, and the fastest. — Adam Savage

Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the intergration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

I think Willa Cather did a short story called "Paul's Case," and in it, when he finally commits suicide, it says, "He surrendered to the black design of things." And that's what I anticipate death will be: a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything. I think once around is enough. I don't want to start it all over again. — Rod Serling

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and I get excited talking about making record artwork or working with T-shirt designs. The least exciting part for us is talking about the finances; it's like going to the dentist for us. But we at least try to do it in a creative way and put our stamp on it. I can only think that we create something that's worth the value of that dollar. — Eddie Vedder

The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help. — David M. Kelley

What's next for technology and design? A lot less thinking about technology for technology's sake, and a lot more thinking about design. Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art and design will rise in importance during this century as we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital technology now affords. — John Maeda

I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that regulators are going to be able to outsmart the bankers. So, the task of designing regulatory reform is trying to make more or less foolproof regulation and that's one of the advantages of the systemic category. — Robert F. Engle

I'm always surprised that people make such a fuss about Italian tailoring and French design houses. I think traditional British tailoring for men is so good. Everything's the right cut, the fabrics are good. — Sean Lennon

I think there's always something about design that is going to be very difficult for more than a small fraction of people to really get. — Khoi Vinh

Although the rumors are of Apple doing an iWatch, I think that design idea is actually too limited. — Tim Bajarin

The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Become a creative thinking detective! Ask probing questions. There is no such thing as a wasted question. — Elaine Dundon

There are three things you need to do as a CEO-founder," Rabois says: "Think strategically, drive design, and drive technology. Some people who are really good at one can build a pretty foundational company. Most people who are very successful are good at two. But Jack is the only person in the Valley I've met who's all three. He's a first-rate strategist, a first-rate designer, and a first-rate technologist. — Keith Rabois

If she were their mother she'd teach them these things are nothing, the clothes and toys and furniture. These things fool people into thinking they must stay where the things are. Leave it all, she'd teach them, even your hopes, and all the dreams of safe, calm places. Go with what is most terrifying, the dizzying empty night and the lonely stars until night slows and you see the whole design. Always choose love over safety if you can tell the difference ... — Josephine Humphreys

When designing a collection that is traditional, that has one specific sort of garment like a white dress, I think just being constantly attuned to trends really help. — Austin Scarlett

I think getting something together to showcase your voice is important. You can also watch cartoons and play games and just kinda listen, and try to see how the design of the character matches to the voice. — Ashly Burch

Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. — Thomas Lockwood

I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It's like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design, because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that. — Kanye West

Design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has. — Jonathan Barnbrook

I think the Russian government is right to be concerned with propaganda on teenagers who are at the age of struggling through sexual identity issue and we should help to channel these urges in productive behavior. Heterosexuality is God's design. Policies that encourage young people to think this are good ideas. — Bryan Fischer

Now, radical forward thinking is offering hope for the future: Replacement body parts to order. A team of scientists in California believe that if you can design them on a computer, you should be able to print them out. — Stephen Hawking

One of the things I've been trying to do is look for simpler or rules underpinning good or bad design. I think one of the most valuable rules is avoid duplication. "Once and only once" is the Extreme Programming phrase. — Martin Fowler

A maze is a puzzle to be solved, with twists and turns and dead ends. It requires logical, analytical thinking and usually has a different way out than the way in. The maze could be a metaphor of struggling through life, going one way and then another until the exit takes your by surprise.

A maze signifies entrapment, while the labyrinth, with its unicursal path leading into the center and out again the same way, provides enlightenment. It's the process, the journey into your deepest self, your soul, the part where God abides. It's a passive path, a surrender even, to an order and design repeated through creation. A sacred geometry. — Kristen Heitzmann

I think time is a constraint to destroy and then reinvent. If you give me a constraint, I'll accept it. But I always try to move it around, or to readapt it. Ecco! If you lock me in a room, well I'll go out through the window! I always remember Achille Castiglioni, one of my mentors, and he always said that in industrial design you have the idea, the fantasy, the concepts - that's the marmalade! - but the constraint of the brief is the bread. You need both in order to find structure for your ideas. — Patricia Urquiola

I think one of the most important investments an organization like TNC [The Nature Conservancy] can make is in helping build local capacity - supporting the growth of a global network of small community-based entities. Help people who live within critical ecosystems help themselves and their neighbors to design a better future relationship between themselves and their natural resources. — Edward Norton

I'm constantly thinking about design, shapes, patterns and colors, so I just want to be more of a blank canvas. But there is a comfort in knowing what you're going to wear, and that probably comes from Catholic school, where I wore a uniform for 10 years. — Prabal Gurung

Is this not precisely how the universe should look if fantasied by a defiled overmind? Is this not exactly how the universe should be presented if shaped by the careful hand of pure but unforgivingly patient malevolence? Who but the immaculate embodiment of malice would design such a contemptible thing? Indeed, is not the vulgarity of scale proof of an Omnimalevolent Creator, greater even than the finely tuned universe itself? Only a thoroughly corrupted, wicked mind could conceive of such impossible proportions and be in possession of the boorish inclination needed to then dangle such an offense to all reasonableness in front of the eyes of a curious explorer - a tiny, living, thinking organic vessel whom through tuning and coercion the Creator had ensured would one day rise to stare out longingly from the shores of their home-world prison. — John Zande

I think with my hands. I design things to be touched-not for a museum. A piece is ready when it has the shape of something to cherish. — Eva Zeisel

What I've learned from different designers is that it's key to be true to who you are and your vision. That's always been my line of thinking. Working through the whole design process, I don't want to create something I wouldn't be proud to wear. — Kellan Lutz

I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright's another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It's a very hard skill to learn. — Richard Garriott

I'm operating in the gap between the trajectory of modernity and the trajectory of modernism. So what people think is design is not design, it's my attempt to engage with the trajectory of modernity. — Liam Gillick

Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages. — Eric S. Raymond

When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that 'the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established' by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated 'dedication to a proposition.' But the fact is that nobody ever 'founded these institutions.' They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design. — Michael Oakeshott

The design of the gum is expressed in the flow of it trunk and limbs, and the design of the European tree mainly in its foliage. In Europe great masses of foliage first attract the eye, here the limbs and trunk, which, on account of their proportion and colour, make themselves felt first, and one thinks of the foliage as a secondary matter. — Hans Heysen

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough. — Edward De Bono

To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man's thinking and doing. — Josef Albers

Creativity is to think more efficiently. — Pierre Reverdy

Design is a form of competitive advantage. People tend to think of design as good art, good visual language, which it absolutely has to be. But it's also about the ability to do systems thinking. — James P Hackett

We have to accept that much of reality is ineffable and so to understand it we can't rely on words alone. — Oli Anderson

The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together. — Mary Robinson

Writing, for me, is a little like wood carving. You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you started), and you start cutting the shape that you think you want it to be. But you find, if you do it right, that the wood has a grain of its own (characters develop and present new insights, concentrated thinking about the story opens new avenues). If you're sensible, you work with the grain and, if you come across a knot hole, you incorporate that into the design. This is not the same as 'making it up as you go along'; it's a very careful process of control. — Terry Pratchett

Few people think about this or are aware of it. But there is nothing made by human beings that does not involve a design decision somewhere. — Bill Moggridge

I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it's hard for me to design one that's much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There's just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is. — Tim Schafer

Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral. — Robin Boyd

A painting walks into the room supported by the collector. It is the painting of a nude by a contemporary artist. She is scarred by shadows from venetian blinds. "The ritual scarification of light and shadow," I say. But am thinking, silently, the female nude is the self-ironization of the male. She, in his shadow, by design. — Carla Harryman

Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous. — Ralph Caplan

Design is thinking made visible. — Unknown

For thirty years most interface design, and most comptuer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest idea is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest idea is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. — Mark Weiser

A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I didn't grow up thinking I'd be a decorator. Design is my greatest passion, and it naturally just pulled me down the path. Same with TV. Being famous or having a show was never the motivation. I got a call and was swept up by the challenge of that first small space redesign. — Nate Berkus

Good design, when it's done well, becomes invisible. It's only when it's done poorly that we notice it. Think of it like a room's air conditioning. We only notice it when it's too hot, too cold, making too much noise, or the unit is dripping on us. Yet, if the air conditioning is perfect, nobody say anything and we focus, instead, on the task at hand. — Jared Spool

When you see the right thing, do it - this may look like more work in the short term, but it's the path of least effort in the long run. If you don't know what the right thing is, do the minimum necessary to get the job done, at least until you figure out what the right thing is. To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to be loyal to excellence. You have to believe that software design is a craft worth all the intelligence, creativity, and passion you can muster. Otherwise you won't look past the easy, stereotyped ways of approaching design and implementation; you'll rush into coding when you should be thinking. You'll carelessly complicate when you should be relentlessly simplifying - and then you'll wonder why your code bloats and debugging is so hard. — Eric S. Raymond

I just think of couture clothing as wearable art. So from - to that extent I, you know, I love having the opportunity to just even be able to touch and look at, you know, these pieces of design. In terms of, you know, is it stressful and does it take a lot of time. It's mostly stressful because you're there because you're nominated. — Debra Messing

All we have to do is replace Obama ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. — Grover Norquist

What is said determines who listens and who understands. Graphic design is a language, but graphic designers are so busy worrying about the nuances - accents, punctuation and so on - that they spend little time thinking about what the words add up to. I'm interested in using our communication skills to change the way things are. — Tibor Kalman

I think nobody would claim that random genetic drift is capable of producing adaptation, that is to say the illusion of design. Random genetic drift can't produce wings that are good at flying, or eyes that are good at seeing, or legs that are good at running. But random genetic drift probably is very important in driving evolution at the molecular genetic level. — Richard Dawkins

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture ... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design" ... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it. — Seth Godin

I think hand-drawn animation can be something really special. If the character design is quite simple it has the ability to allow people to easily relate to the characters in a special manner. — Tomm Moore

I do think that in the near future, if it hasn't happened already, people will be able to use technology to design their own novels, perhaps with individuals themselves as the main character. In other words, everything is being individualized and narrowed. — Don DeLillo

A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I don't think the shortage of artists has much to do with the innate ability to create or initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it's possible and acceptable for you to do it. We've had these doors open wide for only a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it. — Seth Godin

I don't think you make fans happy by just replicating frames. What they want to see is that you stayed true to the story, true to the characters and true to the design. — Sylvain White

Remember, the web isn't about control. If a visitor to your site is familiar with using a browser's native form doodad, you won't be doing them any favors if you override the browser functionality with your own widget, even if you think your widget looks better. — Jeremy Keith

Think about the market, think about the design, and think about who is going to design for that market. Hit the mark. — Tom Peters

Design is thinking made visual. — Saul Bass

In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture ... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair. — Thomas Nagel