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Intellectual elegance [is] a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity.

Massimo Vignelli

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Massimo Vignelli
Age: 83 †
Born: 1931
Born: January 10
Died: 2014
Died: May 27
Architect
Designer
Furniture Designer
Graphic Designer
Interior Designer
University Teacher
Milano
Italia
Mind
Vulgarity
Elegance
Continually
Opposite
Opposites
Intellectual
Education
Knowledge
Refining

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The only way to stay in fashion is never be in. If you are never in fashion, you are never out of fashion.
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A grid is like underwear, you wear it but it's not to be exposed.
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Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.
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In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.
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In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.
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Most of the manufacturers they tend to design things to sell they are more interested in the money side than anything else.
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So what is design all about? It [exists to] decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world ... to make the world a better place to be. It doesn’t have to be one style. We’re not talking about style, we’re talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about giving to everything that surrounds us a level of quality.
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The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.
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I'm not a designer, I'm a sifter. I can sift everything, all the time. My sift level lines keep shaking all the time for everything that is around.
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One life is too short for doing everything.
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There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.
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Scale is a mental - you can say that a lounger has scale, a building has scale, or an object has scale, or a page, or whatever if it's just right. A scale is a relationship to the object and the space surrounding it. And that dialogue could be music, or it could be just noise. And that is why it is so important, the sense of scale.
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Good design is ubiquitous and forever.
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The pencil you leave it there, and it's dead. It doesn't do anything and it doesn't move by itself. It doesn't offer anything it's totally submissive to you.
Massimo Vignelli
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Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.
Massimo Vignelli
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I don't think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word 'dog' with any typeface and it doesn't have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write 'dog' it should bark.
Massimo Vignelli
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You do design because you feel it inside you have a moral issue to spread quality in our environment.
Massimo Vignelli
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I grew up with a pencil. A pencil was my computer at the time and so drawing, drawing, drawing and the tools of drawing where the usual ones and eventually then you graduated from the tools when the work increases and you start to draw by freehand as precise as possible and as accurate as possible, and I was pretty good at that.
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Men's clothing hasn't changed in 200 years, maybe a lapel gets a little wider or a tie gets narrower from time to time. But it's usually always the same. There is stupidity in men's fashion. But women know who they are. They can change. Clothing is seductive for women. They get different personas by buying new clothes. But men don't.
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A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing
Massimo Vignelli