Design is ...

«Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.»

A quotation I really like because it’s to the point of how I think about and how I try to do my work. And… who said it? Yes, God almighty, Mr. Steve Jobs, 2003. I’ve also found some others I like:  

«The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.»

Hans Hofmann  

«The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.»

Bertrand Russell  

«A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.»

Ben Shneiderman, 2003  

«I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.»

Jeffery Veen, 2000  

«Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.»

Charles Mingus  

«Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.»

Frank Lloyd Wright  

«The details are not the details. They make the design.»

Charles Eames   The following one is a good one for many of my customers ;-)  

«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   And another one from the almighty – I may not agree 100%, but it’s certainly a funny one:  

«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, 1998