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I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, 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
Visually
Intellectually
Elegant
Timeless
Powerful
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More quotes by 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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Most of the manufacturers they tend to design things to sell they are more interested in the money side than anything else.
Massimo Vignelli
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One life is too short for doing everything.
Massimo Vignelli
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If you do it right, it will last forever.
Massimo Vignelli
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Good design is ubiquitous and forever.
Massimo Vignelli
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In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.
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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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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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.
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
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Don't be governed by the grid, govern the grid. A grid is like a lion cage - if the trainer stays too long it gets eaten up. You have to know when to leave the cage - you have to know when to leave the grid.
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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A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing
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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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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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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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'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.
Massimo Vignelli
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It is better to starve than get a bad client.
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