Paul Rand Quotes

• Don't try to be original; just try to be good.

  Paul Rand

  Inspiring, Business, Inspiration

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• Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

  Paul Rand

  Art, Simple, Design

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• Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.

  Paul Rand

  Communication, Technology, Views

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• Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

  Paul Rand

  Inspirational, Ideas, Goal

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• Pictures, abstract symbols, materials, and colors are among the ingredients with which a designer or engineer works. To design is to discover relationships and to make arrangements and rearrangements among these ingredients.

  Paul Rand

  Color, Design, Ingredients

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• Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

  Paul Rand

  Death, Art, Simple

  "Learning PHP Design Patterns". Book by William Sanders (p. 105), 2013.

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• Design is everything. Everything!

  Paul Rand

  Death, Design

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• You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.

  Paul Rand

  Reading, Giving, Understanding

  Michael Kroeger, Paul Rand (2008). “Paul Rand: Conversations with Students”, p.62, Princeton Architectural Press

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• The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

  Paul Rand

  Technology, Design, Reassuring

  Paul Rand (2017). “Design, Form, and Chaos”, p.30, Yale University Press

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• Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.

  Paul Rand

  Jobs, Ideas, Interesting

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• Art is an idea that has found its perfect visual expression. And design is the vehicle by which this expression is made possible. Art is a noun, and design is a noun and also a verb. Art is a product and design is a process. Design is the foundation of all the arts.

  Paul Rand

  Inspiring, Art, Expression

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• Everything is design. Everything!

  Paul Rand

  Design

  Michael Kroeger, Paul Rand (2008). “Paul Rand: Conversations with Students”, p.25, Princeton Architectural Press

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• The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous.

  Paul Rand

  Real, Artist, Boys

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• So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

  Paul Rand

  Design Process, Creative, Problem

  Michael Kroeger, Paul Rand (2008). “Paul Rand: Conversations with Students”, p.46, Princeton Architectural Press

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• Asymmetric balance creates greater reader interest. Pleasure derived from observing asymmetrical arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances, which, consciously or not, the spectator adjusts in his own mind.

  Paul Rand

  Lying, Mind, Balance

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• The reason I always insisted on signing my work was not to be subordinate to anyone.

  Paul Rand

  Reason, Signing, Subordinates

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• I never did calligraphy... But handwriting is an entirely different kind of thing. It's part of the syndrome of modernism... It's part of that asceticism.

  Paul Rand

  Calligraphy, Different, Asceticism

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• Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate.

  Paul Rand

  Design, Intuition, Gestalt

  "A designer's art". Book by Paul Rand, 1968.

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• If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

  Paul Rand

  Design, Caves, Logic

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• Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

  Paul Rand

  Running, Artist, Long

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• Artistic tricks divert from the effect that an artist endeavors to produce, and even excellent elements such as bullets, arrows, brackets, ornate initials, are at best superficial ornamentation unless logically employed.

  Paul Rand

  Artist, Arrows, Elements

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