Got a graphic design project to finish but are feeling uninspired? Here are some all-time great Graphic Design quotes to pick you up and motivate you.
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In Maya Angelou’s words, “You can’t use up creativity; the more you use, the more you have”.
While there’s no doubting the iconic author, what do you do when you feel like you’ve hit a creative block and just can’t crack that super-important design project brief? Fret not, we’ve got just the list of Graphic Design quotes from greats in the field and outside of it to perk you up.
Iconic Graphic Design Quotes and What They Stand For
When it comes to quotes about Graphic Design, be it from iconic designers, stalwarts in the art world, or simply entrepreneurs who value design, it won’t be an overstatement to say that the list is endless. However, we figured that a list of 15 chosen quotes, albeit a difficult choice to make, would be just right to serve some inspiration to you.
So, without further ado, let’s get right to it.
Milton Glaser
There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.
Among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States, Milton Glaser’s iconic designs include the I Love New York logo and logos for DC Comics. He also co-founded the New York Magazine and was the first graphic designer in the world to be awarded the National Medal of the Arts by ex-US President Barack Obama in 2009.
This quote by Glaser focuses on the viewer response that every graphic designer must seek. Not one to settle for anything less than stellar, the iconic designer makes it clear that unless your graphic design leaves the viewer in awe there’s still scope to revisit it.
Susan Kare
Good design is not about what medium you’re working in. It’s about thinking hard about what you want to do and what you have to work with before you start.
Prolific artist and graphic designer Susan Kare has been a design consultant for several big names including Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, and Facebook. She is widely known for having contributed typefaces and interface elements to the first Apple Macintosh personal computer and remains a pioneer of pixel art and graphical computer interface design.
Kare’s quote about graphic design highlights what is common to good design regardless of the medium one works in. So, as long you are clear about the purpose and limitations of your design, there is not much that can stop you from creating a good one.
Salvador Dali
Have no fear of perfection -- you’ll never reach it.
Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali needs no introduction. He was a versatile artist whose repertoire spanned painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design, and photography. As part of his graphic art career, Dali worked on several iconic book illustrations including drawings and watercolours for The Arabian Nights.
In keeping with his general persona and politics, Dali rejects the pursuit of perfection through this quote. There’s no denying that one must always deliver their best work, but chasing an ideal of perfection might not help you crack a graphic design project brief!
Paul Rand
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.
Best known for his corporate logo designs including the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC, Paul Rand was a renowned graphic designer and art director. He had a hand in revolutionizing commercial art in America and is widely regarded as the father of modern graphic design.
In this quote, Rand brings to the fore the fact that design is always open to interpretation and can mean different things to different people; and that’s what makes it such a difficult nut to crack. So, when creating a graphic design, it could help to bear in mind that no piece can impress everyone and fit each person’s definition of what design is to them.
Saul Bass
I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent.
Aside from being one of the most revered graphic designers of the 20th Century, Saul Bass was also an Oscar-winning filmmaker. His work spanned logos, title credits, movie posters, screen trailers, trade ads, newspaper ads, album covers, and even subway cards.
Bass’ quote stands apart with the more personal angle he takes to speak about design. To him, it’s about creating beautiful designs regardless of what everyone else thinks of it. Coming from the brain behind opening titles for movies like Psycho, Hitchcock, and Schindler’s List, these might just be the words to live by when your design is thrown helter-skelter by a plethora of feedback!
Satyajit Ray
There’s always some room for improvisation.
Legendary Indian filmmaker, director, and screenwriter, Satyajit Ray was also a skilled calligrapher who is often credited for bringing illustrations and graphic design to the country at a time when it was barely known. He designed all of his own movie posters and book covers, as well as typefaces for the Bengali and Roman scripts.
Ray was known for his eye for detail, and his quote makes perfect sense in that regard. For graphic designers who might feel like they’ve reached a dead-end while trying to improve their design, this multi-talented artist’s words are sure to be an inspiration.
Mira Malhotra
Privilege remains privilege unless challenged by an experience that puts the privileged in a position to understand oppression. Then for those who are already willing and want to change, design needs to simplify information.
Mira Felicia Malhotra is a Mumbai-based illustrator, visual artist, graphic designer, and founding member of Kadak, a global collective of South-Asian women graphic artists. Aside from being the founder of Studio Kohl, Mira has actively been involved in developing a visual identity for brands such as Whatsapp, Nike, Meta, and Snapchat.
As someone whose work comes seasoned with humour and satire while focusing on the most pressing social and political issues of our time, Malhotra’s quote only goes on to show her deep understanding of the information dissemination purpose that design must often serve. On days when you feel like your role as a graphic designer holds no meaning in the larger picture, this is the quote to fall back on.
Jessica Walsh
To be a good artist/letterer/designer/guitar player, it takes practice. A lot of it. More than you can even fathom when you’re starting out.
Art director, illustrator, and educator, Jessica Walsh is the founder of &Walsh, one of the .1% creative agencies owned by women. Driven by the aim to create an agency that swears by and stands by equal opportunity, Walsh’s clientele includes several big names such as Apple, Converse, Snapchat, Netflix, and Twitch.
Among the more modern-day mentions in this blog, this talented designer’s quote hints at the massive amount of practice it takes to master any art and the fact that graphic design is no different. If you’re a graphic designer who’s just starting out in the field, this one should help prepare you for the degree of practice it might take to reach perfection.
Thomas John Watson Jr.
Good design is good business.
Second IBM President, diplomat, philanthropist, and Army Air Forces pilot, were only some of the prolific titles Thomas John Watson Junior held to his credit. It was under his leadership that IBM moved beyond tabulating machines and stepped into the then-nascent world of computers, eventually creating history in the space.
Though not a designer, Watson Jr.’s respect for the impact of design on business is quite evident in this quote, forever solidifying the fact that all it takes is a good logo design or brand identity design to take business to new heights. The fact that the IBM logo could deliver the message of efficiency and reliability simply through a pattern created by stripes itself is proof of the truth in this quote.
Pierre Bonnard
Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.
French painter, illustrator, and printmaker, Pierre Bonnard was an avant-garde artist known for his bold use of color and the decorative quality he lent to his works. Among his work in graphic arts were posters for a French Champagne firm and several book illustrations for avant-garde authors of the time.
Bonnard’s speciality lay in depicting intimate aspects of everyday life through paintings that made intense use of colour. Hence, it comes as no surprise that his graphic design quote does a tribute to the importance and usage of colour. As most experts in colour theory would agree, Bonnard is quite accurate in his assessment of how colour, when used rightly, can go a long way in making design not only pleasing to the eye but also capable of reeling the audience in. So on your next graphic design project, don’t hold back on the usage of colour!
Kate/Aries Moross
The key to great ideas is not having them, it is executing them. And great ideas come from problems. As designers, we call problems briefs, and we call reactions to problems concepts.
Illustrator, and graphic designer, Kate/Aries Moross is known for their skills in typographic illustration and is the art director for Studio Moross. A rising star in the graphic design space, they are the brains behind billboard campaigns for Cadburys, a signature clothing range, and have contributed illustrations for Vogue Magazine.
This quote by Moross demystifies the concept of a brief and how the secret to cracking one always lies in the execution of great ideas as opposed to simply coming up with them. Remember how we started with the lack of inspiration graphic designers feel when unable to deliver what the brief asks? Well, as per Moross the right reaction to your brief and the courage to execute an idea you believe in can help you deal with such a situation.
Paula Scher
The best way to accomplish serious design…is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.
The first female principal at renowned design firm Pentagram, Paula Scher, is credited with creating the new identity and promotional graphics system that later went on to influence much of the graphic designs created for theatrical promotion. Some of her stellar album cover designs went on to receive Grammy nominations and she played a pivotal role in reviving historical typefaces and design styles.
This quote by Scher speaks to the approach one needs to take in order to deliver a design that gets taken seriously. She makes it clear that one can easily do this if they go into the project with the kind of willingness to learn that one has when they’re completely unqualified for the job. The more of a learning curve you’re open to, the more the chances of you nailing the graphic design you’re working on!
Neville Brody
Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.
During his prolific career as a graphic designer and typographer, Neville Brody has designed numerous album covers, t-shirt designs, and poster designs, and has also been the art director for two major magazines: The Face and Arena. He is also the designer behind 23 font families and has given direction to the redesign of British newspapers The Observer and The Guardian.
With this quote, Brody makes an important point about the malleability of graphic design and any design in the digital format highlighting how it is essential for a designer to always be open to evolution, be it in terms of their designs or thought process. As any designer would agree, designs that refuse to change with time often become obsolete.
David Carson
Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.
David Carson is widely regarded as the graphic designer whose style forever changed the way visual communication was approached and perceived in the 1990s. A competitive surfer who was ranked eighth in the world, Carson’s graphic design career started with a small surfer magazine, Self and Musician, and he later went on to design print ads with mainstream giants such as Nike and Levi Strauss.
Unlike most other quotes in this list, Carson does a fun take on what it means to be a graphic designer and how they literally can save the world, albeit a bit slower than rock and roll would. As someone whose design stood out with overlapping photos and mixed variations of font types, this is a graphic designer whose work and quote serve as inspiration to anyone who does not believe in swimming with the tide.
Donald Judd
Design has to work, art does not.
Donald Clarence Judd is an artist who is generally regarded as the international exponent of minimalism in art. Judd has also worked with design, and architecture, and pursued quite a long stint in the sculpture industry. He is known for his radical and influential thinking, as well as his astute critique of works of art.
With this quote, Judd makes it crystal clear that art and design aren’t the same thing, unlike what a lot of viewers and non-designers might think. The job of art often is to make people think and admire it, while a design is only successful when people understand it without having to think much. Design can be aesthetically pleasing, but it must work towards a message or brief, and this endeavour can only be successful when a graphic designer can clearly distinguish their work from that of an artist.
Lindon Leader
I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those two things.
One might best know Lindon Leader as the designer behind the legendary FedEx logo, which has won over 40 awards and continues to be a benchmark for logo designers across the globe. His three-decade-long career spanned branding design, trademark design, and identity management.
This quote encapsulates the design philosophy that has driven Lindon and his strategic design consultancy, Leader Creative, Utah. It highlights the two most important things that design must achieve: simplicity and clarity. In graphic design, it is essential to get rid of clutter and do away with anything that is not absolutely necessary. For any graphic designer, it is necessary to keep taking away elements from a design till the time they’re left with only what is intrinsic to the message their design must communicate. So, if clutter is the struggle you’re facing, Lindon might have resolved it with this one simple quote!
Additional resources to aid your graphic design journey
So, that was our round-up of quotes, and here’s hoping we’ve motivated you to move ahead with the graphic design project you might have been having trouble with.
If you’re someone who’s seeking a deeper understanding of graphic design, you can refer to this in-depth guide to graphic design or this simple blog about the different types of graphic design. Alternatively, you can also refer to our student project work for insight into how graphic design concepts are applied to projects.
Looking for some must-read graphic design books instead? We’ve got you covered. Here’s a guide to the 21 best graphic design books to include in your reading list and an informative article that gives insight into some stellar examples of Graphic Design (fair warning: this one’s a treat to the eyes!)
Next Steps
If we’ve managed to inspire you enough, here are some additional resources and recommendations that will surely be useful in learning more about graphic design - the industry, career prospects, and much more.
- Watch this session by design veteran and AND’s Academic Head, Prachi Mittal, and our Course Lead, Soumya Tiwari.
- Talk to a course advisor to discuss how you can transform your career with one of our courses.
- Pursue our Graphic Design courses - all courses are taught through live, interactive classes by industry experts, and some even offer a Job Guarantee.
- Take advantage of the scholarship and funding options that come with our courses to overcome any financial hurdle on the path of your career transformation.
Note: All information and/or data from external sources is believed to be accurate as of the date of publication.
