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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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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
Better
Design
Surrounds
Everything
Amount
Vulgarity
Giving
Levels
Intangible
Make
Style
Decrease
World
Quality
Tangible
Talking
Surround
Doesn
Exists
Place
Level

More quotes by Massimo Vignelli

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I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.
Massimo Vignelli
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Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.
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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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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If you do it right, it will last forever.
Massimo Vignelli
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In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.
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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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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Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
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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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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One life is too short for doing everything.
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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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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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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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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It is better to starve than get a bad client.
Massimo Vignelli
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I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.
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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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