Graphic Artist Quotes

Our cover has always been really important. For those of you who haven’t seen itCharles Burns, who is a graphic artist, does four portraits, so it’s split into quadrants and there’s four heads, basically—portraits of people. We’ve actually often thought and freaked out, what if something happened to Charles Burns? Because he’s so identified with the cover of our magazine, I don’t know what we would do if anything happened to Charles Burns.

I love doing logos. I've been a graphic artist all my life.

I am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term artist rather embarrassing.

Unlike the photography and prints, I never catalogued, kept track of or exhibited the sketches. I sold some occasionally, but never saw myself as a graphic artist. They became more important to me thanks to the exhibition, however, and I realized that these drawings were quite interesting after all.

I've always considered myself a graphic artists - a draftsman - as opposed to a typist. I do still work on a drawing table. At times drawing on a computer feels like I'm drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.

Designers may be the true intellectuals of the future.

Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.

Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking.

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.

Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.

Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order

Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.

You can't do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously.

A designer can mull over complicated designs for months. Then suddenly the simple, elegant, beautiful solution occurs to him. When it happens to you, it feels as if God is talking! And maybe He is.

The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read; their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read.

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.

Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new font to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.

There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.

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

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.

One of the wonderful things that I've always loved as an art student, what I always loved about comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time, so now film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios.

Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures.

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.

Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

Design is where science and art break even.

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong.

A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.

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

As a graphic artist, my job on a local paper was creating the advertising as well as working as a journalist on sports and community issues. There are many more jobs I've done in my day, I can't remember them all.

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

It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

You know, it's no accident that the great painters came from areas like Europe where there is a lot of clouds and rain, which begets color and subtle washes of tone. Most great graphic artists come from areas with prevalent sun, where line and shadow are paramount.

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