Design

Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system.

Sourced

• Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something.
  • Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art, New York, in A Conversation About The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

• The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living. The assumption is that somewhere, hidden, is a better way of doing things.
  • Harry Bertoia, Knoll Design, p.66

• Design is to design a design to produce a design.
  • John Heskett, in Design: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, USA, 2005, 148 pages on p.3

• I think so many of the objects we're surrounded by seem trivial. And I think that's because they're either trying to make a statement or trying to be overtly different. What we were trying to do was have a very honest approach and an exploration of materials and surface treatment. So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think 'of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?' It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.
  • Jonathan Ive, Designer of the iMac, iBook and iPod, in iconeye 004 (July/August 2003)

• The more I learnt about this cheeky — almost rebellious — company, the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had reason for being that wasn't just about making money.
  • Jonathan Ive, in iconeye 004 (July/August 2003)

• 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.
  • Steve Jobs, as quoted in Rob Walker, "The Guts of a New Machine", The New York Times Magazine, 30 November 2003

• In a very real way, designers create the human environment; they make the things we use, the places we live and work, our modes of communication and mobility. Simply put, design matters. And at a moment in our history in which the scientific community has issued serious warnings about the negative impacts of our flawed designs-from global warming and water pollution to the loss of biodiversity and natural resources-designers have a critical role to play in the creation of a more just, healthful and sustainable world.
  • William McDonough, 2004, “21st Century Design,” (accessed March 26, 2008)

• Design is redesign.
  • Jan Michl, in "On seeing design as redesign" (Scandinavian Journal of Design History 12, 2002: 7-23.)

• Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.
  • Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Introduction to the 2002 Edition

• In their work, designers often become expert with the device they are designing. Users are often expert at the task they are trying to perform with the device. [...] Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.
  • Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988), Ch. 6

• This is exactly the meaning of design: the conflict between form and content, form being the problem. [...] It is the coming together of form and content that is the realization of design.
  • Paul Rand, Conversations with Students (2008), p. 32

External links

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