Quote

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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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
Like
Governed
Lion
Grid
Govern
Grids
Stays
Trainer
Lions
Trainers
Gets
Cage
Leave
Cages
Long
Eaten

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Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
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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.
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If you do it right, it will last forever.
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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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I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.
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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.
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Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.
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One life is too short for doing everything.
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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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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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A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing
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In design, be logical, search for truth, be clear.
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A grid is like underwear, you wear it but it's not to be exposed.
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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.
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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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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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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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It is better to starve than get a bad client.
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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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Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.
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