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I think that you could design a terrible logo for a good company with great people and they could build it into a great program. Alternatively you could design what seems to be a brilliant logo for people who are not smart or energetic or are incapable of associating with anything positive and it would become a terrible logo.

Michael Bierut

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Michael Bierut
Age: 54
Designer
Graphic Designer
Cleveland
Ohio
Think
Terrible
Energetic
Thinking
Company
Incapable
People
Become
Brilliant
Seems
Program
Anything
Build
Alternatively
Great
Smart
Associating
Good
Positive
Logo
Would
Design
Logos

More quotes by Michael Bierut

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Target for example, is just a dot with a circle around it, that's all it is, so if you want a logo like Target, you don't need to hire a designer, you barely need to know how to operate a computer program, the logo may as well be anything.
Michael Bierut
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If you look at the Olympic graphics for Mexico or Los Angeles, those programs don't look contemporary by today's eyes but they really look like they are of their place and time.
Michael Bierut
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I've heard some designers talk about the design process being centred on invention, starting with a blank slate. I admire that and occasionally I'm capable of that, but I have to admit that I really have trouble working with completely open briefs.
Michael Bierut
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If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying.
Michael Bierut
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Good typography, first, makes words readable. At its best, it does something more: it helps express the animating spirit of the ideas behind the words.
Michael Bierut
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The problem contains the solution.
Michael Bierut
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There was a time when most people had a choice between two kinds of personal communication, handwriting or using a typewriter. Today, people are invited to choose from a list of (surprisingly exotic) typefaces every time they turn on their computer. I think this has made everyone more aware of the idea that picking a typeface is a conscious choice.
Michael Bierut
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The truth about logos is that they are not that hard to do.
Michael Bierut
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Australia is one of the few places that I can think of where the cities, at least those I've been to, seem to have strikingly different characters and visual textures. To an American like me, there's basically Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and the rest is all bush.
Michael Bierut
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Designs that have a whiff of complex impenetrability tends to suggest big, complicated ideas. Academic writing tends to work the same way, I understand.
Michael Bierut
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Every little job counts. Design counts.
Michael Bierut
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A good cook can make something amazing out of even the blandest ingredients. Still, you don't want to eat the exact same dish every day.
Michael Bierut
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When it comes to working on identities, a lot of the time I find myself working with a company that has been around for a while. No matter what they say their goal is, the history and the impression that they have already made in the minds of the public is a real thing that you have to deal with.
Michael Bierut
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I had a lot of enthusiasms that were very contradictory, I was never very doctrinaire in the type of design I wanted to do.
Michael Bierut
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Simplicity, wit, and good typography.
Michael Bierut
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Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.
Michael Bierut
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I'm not sure about my design work every time.
Michael Bierut
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Australia seems to strike a balance between big and small. It's big enough to have that diversity, but not so big that it disintegrates into something that is not connected.
Michael Bierut
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The studies I've seen about readability and legibility tend to focus on a specific set of metrics: size, not just the point size, but things like the size of the lower case letters as a proportion of the overall letter height, and line length. People simply can't read really small type set in really long lines.
Michael Bierut
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I'm always conscious of the context, the history, the specific environment of anything that I design and what it is going to be operating within.
Michael Bierut