Tag Archives: Design

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Never miss the chance to dance.

You have to create content before you can design it.

If you want to complete a tax return or repair a dishwasher, go for logic every time. But if you want to overthrow a tyrant, write a sonnet, make something great or get people to think in a new way, then go for passion.

Charisma appears to be a very special gift that’s easy to recognise in others yet dauntingly hard to inculcate in oneself.

The painful truth is that, at work, we’re on trial all the time. Life outside the office is no different – you are subject to obvious scrutiny on the big occasions.

Above all, encourage each other, and make the work fun.

Writing a business presentation, writing a best man’s speech at a wedding, writing an after-dinner talk – these are all creative acts but they require preparation and structure.

The vast majority of presentations today are done on PowerPoint. Yet PowerPoint is to communications what a microwave is to cooking – living proof that easier is not always better. And just as a microwave is the perfect short cut to bland food, so PowerPoint is the perfect short cut to bland thought.

If you don’t have confidence in you, they won’t have confidence in your idea.

The bigger the problem, the more valuable the solution.

Have you ever watched a house being built from scratch? For months and months nothings seems to happen – then suddenly the house is there. When the base is properly in place, the rest is easy.

You don’t need to escape to Yorkshire, let alone Marrakesh, to find some isolation – but you do need to find it.

Unusual thinking doesn’t happen when you’re in a utterly usual space. You must find a new space to think in.

So when you’re pitching to someone, you’re asking them to judge the future. Since knowing the future is beyond logic, their judgement won’t be based on logical factors but on emotional factors: trust, confidence, hope, ambition, desire.

Life is too short so kiss slowly, laugh insanely love truly and forgive quickly.

Always forgive your enemies, nothing will annoy them more.

I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

If someone heard that you were a great company to work with (and decides to use your product / service / app because of that) and they then experience the exact opposite, it’s not only a neutral outcome. Instead that customer has an exponentially bad experience, because their expectation was that much more than theyContinue reading “Words 58”

If I’m going to bitch about someone else’s work, what about my work? If I have a problem with how someone runs their company, how about how I run mine?

You don’t change someone’s mind by telling them they’re an idiot. When’s the last time someone changed your mind that way?

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.

If you find an element of your interface requires instructions, then you need to redesign it.

Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour.

Be friendly to those who enjoy your work and friendlier to those who attack it.

One who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

Get excited & make things.

If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early.

A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Smart people ask for clarification on things they don’t understand.

You have to make every single detail perfect and you have to limit the number of details.

I would never design a building before I’ve seen the site and met the people who will be using it.

Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential.

Create your own visual style. Let it be unique to you, yet identifiable by others.

The difference between a Designer and Developer, when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Always design something by considering its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city.

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.

Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.

It’s art if it can’t be explained. It’s fashion if no one ask for an explanation. It’s design if it doesn’t need explanation.

Good design must be defined by appropriateness to audience and goals, and by its effectiveness, not by its adherence to Swiss design or the number of awards it wins.