Lessons in my design career. I'm curating a collection of quotes from my mentors, seniors, and design gurus. Their inspiration has provided me with continuous fuel on my professional journey.
I also write articles on Medium for design knowledge sharing, such as Typography, Design system, Ways of working, etc. Welcome to read.
01
“
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
— r. buckminster fuller
I made this screenshot from my working group channel. Mike, my former creative director at ibm, used this classical quote to warn designers that only relying on logic and research doesn't guarantee a good design. The creative process also involves intuition and a gut feeling.
Mike Abbink is the creator of the ibm plex typeface. It's fascinating to see how a type designer, with his broad knowledge, conducted the whole digital product design system – Carbon Design System.
02
“
Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
It relieves you of a lot of pressure. It’s not a bout waiting for hours for this moment where inspiration strikes. It’s just showing up and getting started, and then something amazing happens or it doesn’t happen. All that matters is you enable the chance for something to happen. For that you have to sit at your desk and you have to draw and do and make decisions and hope for the best. — christoph niemann
Thinking with your hands. — cyrus highsmith
Making art is an intuitive process, and you have to learn to trust that intuition. If you knew ahead what you were going to do, you wouldn't be afraid. When I sit down to design, I'm always afraid. I'm not sure what I am gonna do. You probably experienced going to your workplace, and the first thing you do is clean up the workplace. You clean it up because you use all kinds of denial mechanisms to delay starting the creative process because it's scary. You're afraid. And I think that's part of our work. There's this certain amount of fear because you don't know exactly where you're going. And I think that has been comforting to me over the year because I know that if I knew where I was going, I would stop, probably. — frank gehry
In my experience, authenticity indesign often emerges from moments of uncertainty. Making art and design always begins from the compromised position of not being fully ready. There’s never a perfect time or state of complete preparedness. Instead, authenticity comes from embracing this incompleteness and turning it into an opportunity for genuine improvisation. Improvisation, in turn, quickly closes the gap between uncertainty and creativity. — john maeda
I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story. — haruki murakami
