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You can reach timelessness if you look for the essence of things and not the appearance. The appearance is transitory — the appearance is fashion, the appearance is trendiness — but the essence is timeless.

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
Fashion
Look
Looks
Timelessness
Things
Transitory
Timeless
Appearance
Reach
Essence

More quotes by 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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Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.
Massimo Vignelli
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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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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.
Massimo Vignelli
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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.
Massimo Vignelli
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A grid is like underwear, you wear it but it's not to be exposed.
Massimo Vignelli
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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.
Massimo Vignelli
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It is better to starve than get a bad client.
Massimo Vignelli
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There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.
Massimo Vignelli
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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.
Massimo Vignelli
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Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.
Massimo Vignelli
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Good design is ubiquitous and forever.
Massimo Vignelli
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Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
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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If you can design one thing, you can design everything.
Massimo Vignelli
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If you do the best thing everyday of your life, but nothing shakes you nor shakes the table for you and others, it is stale and its not worth it.
Massimo Vignelli
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In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.
Massimo Vignelli
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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.
Massimo Vignelli
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A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing
Massimo Vignelli
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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.
Massimo Vignelli