Quotes from Massimo Vignelli

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

Good design is ubiquitous and forever.

A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing

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

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

Greed is really the religion of vulgarity.

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

One life is too short for doing everything.

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.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.

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

The first thing you need to make clear to a client is that you aren't there to answer his wants but to answer his needs.

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.

If you do it right, it will last forever.

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

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

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

Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.

Design is not art. Design is utilitarian, art is not.

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

...if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead!

Most of the manufacturers they tend to design things to sell they are more interested in the money side than anything else.

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

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