Michael Bierut Quotes

Simplicity, wit, and good typography.

Not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything.

The problem contains the solution.

Good typography, first, makes words readable. At its best, it does something more: it helps express the animating spirit of the ideas behind the words.

Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.

BE PURPOSEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN THE OPTIONS ARE NEARLY INFINITE.

If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying.

Part of maturing as a designer is discovering what you're good at.

Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith.

No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it.

If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.

The truth about logos is that they are not that hard to do.

I'm always conscious of the context, the history, the specific environment of anything that I design and what it is going to be operating within.

It's a cliché, but typefaces are really just ingredients.

I think that you could design a terrible logo for a good company with great people and they could build it into a great program. Alternatively you could design what seems to be a brilliant logo for people who are not smart or energetic or are incapable of associating with anything positive and it would become a terrible logo.

Every little job counts. Design counts.

If you can announce the Higgs Boson in Comic Sans, clearly anybody can do anything.

The Nike swash that cost $30 and was designed by a Portland State University art student was probably worth that when she first showed it to them. At that point it had no equity at all. None of the guys commissioning it particularly liked it, they all wanted the Adidas three stripes and they thought that was a good logo.

I'm not sure about my design work every time.

Target for example, is just a dot with a circle around it, that's all it is, so if you want a logo like Target, you don't need to hire a designer, you barely need to know how to operate a computer program, the logo may as well be anything.

A good cook can make something amazing out of even the blandest ingredients. Still, you don't want to eat the exact same dish every day.

I have a bunch of calendars I used before I went digital. Every once in a while, I'll open up one from 1991 and look at all the names and appointments and things that, at the time, seemed so important. Meetings that I was really worried about, things that I was getting calls four times a day about, and I wonder, "Where did it all go? Where are they now?" It's so strange, everything has disappeared. The only thing that stays behind is the work.

Everyone can have an opinion on a logo.

I had a lot of enthusiasms that were very contradictory, I was never very doctrinaire in the type of design I wanted to do.

I actually don't think that brand new logos are worth that much or mean that much in and of themselves. So why not have a class of third graders compete to design your logo?