Massimo Vignelli Quotes

#1. A grid is like underwear, you wear it but it's not to be exposed.

#2. So what is design all about? It [exists to] decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world ... to make the world a better place to be. It doesn't have to be one style. We're not talking about style, we're talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about giving to everything that surrounds us a level of quality.

#3. You do design because you feel it inside; you have a moral issue to spread quality in our environment.

#4. I don't think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word 'dog' with any typeface and it doesn't have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write 'dog' it should bark.

#5. Scale is a mental - you can say that a lounger has scale, a building has scale, or an object has scale, or a page, or whatever if it's just right. A scale is a relationship to the object and the space surrounding it. And that dialogue could be music, or it could be just noise. And that is why it is so important, the sense of scale.

#6. The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.

#7. If you do it right, it will last forever.

#8. I started to begin to be interested in architecture and design when I was 14 years old, which was pretty early in life. And then I would start to look at architectural magazines and I eventually went to the school of architecture too, but one of the things I learned very early is that an architect should be able to design anything from a spoon to the city.

#9. The computer is really like a pencil, you know. It used to be. The pencil can do anything you want to, but you have to do it, and the same is with the computer.

#10. One life is too short for doing everything.

#11. The computer needs ... even by accident, offers incredible beautiful things that are very seductive. And if you forget about, or if you don't have an idea to begin with, it is very easy to be seduced and that is not a good use of the computer.

#12. Design is not art. Design is utilitarian, art is not.

#13. I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.

#14. If you do the best thing everyday of your life, but nothing shakes you nor shakes the table for you and others, it is stale and its not worth it.

#15. You can reach timelessness if you look for the essence of things and not the appearance. The appearance is transitory - the appearance is fashion, the appearance is trendiness - but the essence is timeless.

#16. Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.

#17. The only way to stay in fashion is never be in. If you are never in fashion, you are never out of fashion.

#18. Good design is ubiquitous and forever.

#19. There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.

#20. Designers take care of everything around us. Everything that is around us, this table, this chair, this lamp, this pen has been designed. All of these things, everything has been designed by somebody.

#21. Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.

#22. Don't be governed by the grid, govern the grid. A grid is like a lion cage - if the trainer stays too long it gets eaten up. You have to know when to leave the cage - you have to know when to leave the grid.

#23. It's the space you put between the notes that make the music.

#24. Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution.

#25. I started very early. I started to be interested in design when I was 14 years old, basically, and before I was just like anybody else, any other kid. I was playing with everything. I loved to do stage sets by cutting a piece of board and making a cut in three sides, flipping it down, making the stage.

#26. It is better to starve than get a bad client.

#27. Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.

#28. In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.

#29. It's not important to develop your own style but your own approach.

#30. A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing

#31. Intellectual elegance [is] a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity.

#32. If you can design one thing, you can design everything.

#33. Good design is a matter of discipline. It starts by looking at the problem and collecting all the available information about it. If you understand the problem, you have the solution. It's really more about logic than imagination.

#34. In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.

#35. There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.

#36. You cannot play the piano by telling a pianist what to do, go a little more to the left or to the right. And the same is for the computer, really. You have to play yourself to get the most out of it.

#37. The scale relates to everything. The thickness of a pipe, the thickness of a leg of the furniture. Even color could have a scale.

#38. You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.