50 Quotes by Paul Rand

Pictures, abstract symbols, materials, and colors are among the ingredients with which a designer or engineer works. To design is to discover relationships and to make arrangements and rearrangements among these ingredients.

Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea.

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

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

In the West, we look at art through life. Well, that's one way of living. In the Orient they look at life through art. They even drink their tea without sugar, for the same reason that they don't like a lot of frilly decorations on a painting. I can't stand butter on my bread for the same reason. I'm allergic to goo and rococo.

Artistic tricks divert from the effect that an artist endeavors to produce, and even excellent elements such as bullets, arrows, brackets, ornate initials, are at best superficial ornamentation unless logically employed.

To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.

Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance, form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form.

A style is the consequence of recurrent habits, restraints, or rules invented or inherited, written or overheard, intuitive or preconceived.