80 Design Quotes to Boost Creativity & Inspire Artistry

By Samantha Williams

Writer, Entrepreneur and Inspirational quote curator

Published August 30, 2022

These powerful quotes about the art of design will get your creativity flowing.

If you work as a graphic designer, interior designer, fashion designer, or in any other creative field, inspiration is the key to success.

Creating beautiful, thought-provoking designs requires both passion and skill.

Inspiration can often be elusive, but reading this collection of design quotes is guaranteed to boost your creativity.

True masters of design can expertly mix their talent with their creativity.

These design quotes come from the minds of philosophers, famous designers, and other imaginative geniuses.

If you work hard and practice your skills, you can succeed in the world of design.

Read this collection of inspiring quotes to get your creative juices flowing.

Design quotes to boost your creativity

This collection of design quotes will power up your imagination and encourage your creativity.

1. “Design is intelligence made visible.” — Alina Wheeler

2. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou

3. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You will also enjoy our article on Harry Styles quotes.

4. “Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.” — Brian Reed

5. “The artist in me cries out for design.” — Robert Frost

6. “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

7. “You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” — Walt Disney

8. “Design adds value faster than it adds costs.” — Joel Spolsky

9. “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” — Robert L. Peters

10. “Every great design begins with an even better story.” — Lorinda Mamo

Design quotes to fuel up your imagination

When you read the advice and wisdom of successful designers, you’ll be inspired to create your own masterpieces.

11. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

12. “The more I deal with the work as something that is my own, as something that is personal, the more successful it is.” — Marian Bantjes

13. “Design is not a single object or dimension. Design is messy and complex.” — Natasha Jen

14. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.” — Elon Musk

15. “The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design.” — Adam Judge

16. “It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.” — Paula Scher

17. “Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.” — Tom Peters

18. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with white space. I don’t think it’s a problem to have a blank wall.” — Annie Leibovitz

19. “Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all… good design must primarily serve people.” — Thomas J. Watson

20. “Accessible design is good design.” — Steve Ballmer

Design quotes to jumpstart the creative process

Check out these inspirational design quotes to get a boost of artistry in your life.

21. “I’m not like most designers, who have to set sail on an exotic getaway to get inspired. Most of the time, it’s on my walk to work, or sitting in the subway and seeing something random or out of context.” — Alexander Wang

22. “Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent – not with how things are but with how they might be – in short, with design.” — Herbert A. Simon

23. “Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems.” — Tim Brown

24. “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” — Salvador Dali

25. “I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those two things.” — Lindo Leader

26. “Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It’s about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth – intense but not distorted. You can go to a place really feel it in your heart. It’s actually a beautiful feeling.” —Peter Zumthor

27. “Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking.” — Ellen Lupton

28. “There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and wow! Wow is the one to aim for.” — Milton Glaser

29. “The function of design is letting design function.” — Micha Commeren

30. “Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.” — Massimo Vignelli

Design quotes to get your creative juices flowing

Remember these words of wisdom to guide you on your journey to artistic greatness.

31. “Design is a constant challenge to balance comfort with luxe, the practical with the desirable.” — Donna Karan

32. “You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt … or in front of a piece of graphic design.” — Stefan Sagmeister

33. “The aim of being a good designer is to have an influence. If you design furniture or lifestyle, you should influence the way people evolve globally. It’s good to have an influence.” — Olivier Theyskens

34. “If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.” — Michael Bierut

35. “In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.” — Donald Norman

36. “I don’t start with a design objective; I start with a communication objective. I feel my project is successful if it communicates what it is supposed to communicate.” — Mike Davidson

37. “I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That’s my intent.” — Saul Bass

38. “Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs.” — Frank Chimero

39. “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.” — Jeffrey Zeldman

40. “I would think twice about designing stuff for which there was no need and which didn’t endure.” — Robin Day

More design quotes to inspire you

Designing is such a creative art that really draws you in. Take a look at these interesting design quotes.

41. “The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living.” — Harry Bertoia

42. “There’s design, and there’s art. Good design is total harmony. There’s no better designer than nature – if you look at a branch or a leaf, it’s perfect. It’s all function. Art is different. It’s about emotion. It’s about suffering and beauty – but mostly suffering!” — Diane von Furstenberg

43. “Art is to be free. Design is to fix.” — Kanye West

44. “Design, whether it’s on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It’s mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns – elements that you wouldn’t often put together in an interesting way.” — Blake Lively

45. “A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere, even the careless, the most stupid thinker.” — David Hume

46. “Good design is like a refrigerator – when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks.” — Irene Au

47. “Design transcends agenda. It speaks to the politics of optimism.” — Paul Bennett

48. “How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things, but how well we are understood.” — Andrew Grove

49. “Get rid of everything that is not essential to making a point.” — Christoph Niemann

50. “The role of the designer is that of a good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.” — Charles Eames

Famous Design Quotes by Famous Personalities

Take a look at some of our favorite design quotes in this next collection!

51. “Good design’s 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.” — Susan Kare

52. “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” ― Douglas Adams

53. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” ― Steve Jobs

54. “Design can be art; design can be aesthetics; design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.” ― Paul Rand

55. “When the image is new, the world is new.” ― Gaston Bachelard

56. “A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman, but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.” ― Louis Nizer

57. “If you can design one thing, you can design everything.” ― Massimo Vignelli

58. “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” ― Joe Sparano

59. “Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.” ― Tate Linden

60. “The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.” ― Massimo Vignelli

Design Quotes To Inspire Creativity

These words of wisdom will fuel up your imagination and jumpstart the creative process.

61. “People ignore designs that ignore people” — Frank Chimero

62. “Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.” — Erik Adigard

63. “Design is where science and art break even.” — Robin Mathew

64. “To say that something is designed means it has intentions that go beyond its function. Otherwise, it’s just planning.” — Ayse Birsel

65. “Truly elegant design incorporates top-notch functionality into a simple, uncluttered form.” — David Lewis

66. “I’m convinced that without bad design, the world would be a far less stimulating place; we would have nothing to marvel over and nothing to be nostalgic about.” — Carrie Phillips

67. “A Design isn’t finished until somebody is using it.” — Brenda Laurel

68. “Designers think everything done by someone else is awful, and that they could do it better themselves, which explains why I designed my own living room carpet, I suppose.” — Chris Bangle

69. “Designers love subtle cues because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues.” — Steve Krug

70. “Design is as much a matter of finding problems as it is solving them.” — Bryan Lawson

Design Quotes For Proper Planning

If you’re feeling uninspired or stuck on a design, these quotes will undoubtedly give you some ideas.

71. “Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order.” ― Victor Papanek

72. “Many things difficult to design prove easy to perform.” ― Samuel Johnson

73. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” ― Jim Rohn

74. “Design is thinking made visual.” ― Saul Bass

75. “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” ― Jim Rohn

76. “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” ― Steve Jobs

77. “There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.” ― Massimo Vignelli

78. “Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.” ― Edward Tufte

79. “A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.” ― Bruno Munari

80. “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” ― Steve Jobs