«Everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her.»
William Morris (1834-1896)
William Morris, essay and lecture entitled "The Lesser Arts", originally delivered in 1877 and later published in his 1882 collection, "Hopes and Fears for Art".«A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.»
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949, p. 262, as quoted in Wikipedia.«Tras pensarlo mucho llegué a la conclusión de que diseñar es ordenar y de que el diseño consiste en cumplir una función manteniendo la emoción, la emoción estética. Todo lo que soluciona con belleza es un buen diseño. Lo que consigue estética sin función es otra cosa. En el diseño tienen que darse a la vez ambos: solución y belleza. No vale entorpecer con belleza. La belleza nace de la gracia, de evitar, precisamente, la torpeza.
Cuando era joven me daba vergüenza reconocer, y ya no digamos afirmar, que me importaba la belleza, que consideraba esencial la parte estética de las cosas. Ahora me enorgullezco de haberla cuidado. También de decirlo. Y hasta de repetirlo: la estética es lo más importante. La función se da por hecha. Pero la emoción estética enriquece la compañía.»
Miguel Milá (1931-2024)
Miguel Milá, Lo esencial: El diseño y otras cosas de la vida, Editorial Lumen, 2019.«What is good design in your eyes?»
«The nearest I have ever come to defining good design is that it is simply 98 per cent common sense. But what makes the subject so interesting is the other two per cent, what you may call aesthetics. Many products are demonstrably good, but those with that extra two per cent have a magic ingredient that places them in another category altogether – it is the difference between something that is perfectly acceptable and something that is so special that everybody wants to own it.»
«When the magic ingredient is present, the whole quality of life is improved. Good design gives you pleasure and improves the quality of all our lives through products that work well, are affordable and look beautiful. As Corbusier said, good design really is simply intelligence made visible.»
Sir Terence Conran (1931-2020)
Interview: Sir Terence Conran on Democratising Good Design, The Design Sheppard, February 1, 2012. Contribución de Cristina Fernández Marcos, Taller de Diseño, Universidad de Navarra, 28 mayo 2024.«I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.»
Yohji Yamamoto (Tokio, 1943)
Yohji Yamamoto, Talking to Myself. Yohji Yamamoto, Kiyokazu Washida. Carla Sozzani Editore, 2002.«Art has poisoned our life. Aesthetics has infected everyone... If one chooses a typewriter or a sewing machine in the living room, the housewife say: 'Please take it away; it destroys the harmony of the room'. Post-cards, stamps, pouches, railway-tickets, pots umbrellas, towels, pyamas, chairs, blankets, handkerchiefs and ties – everything is 'arty'. How much more refreshing are those articles which are not called art: bathrooms, bath-tubs, bicycles, automobiles, engine-rooms and flat-irons. There are still people who can make beautiful things without art. They are the progressives.»
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)
Quote of Van Doesburg in his article: 'The end of art'; in 'De Stijl' series XII, 1924-5, pp. 135–136.«Non v'è più bellezza, se non nella lotta. Nessuna opera che non abbia un carattere aggressivo può essere un capolavoro. La poesia deve essere concepita come un violento assalto contro le forze ignote, per ridurle a prostrarsi davanti all'uomo.»
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944)
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifesto del Futurismo, 1909.«If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world.»
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
John Ruskin (1843–1860), Modern Painters, Volume V, Part VI. Of Leaf Beauty, Project Gutemberg.«What is impractical can never be beautiful.»
Otto Wagner (1841-1918)
Otto Wagner (1902). “Modern Architecture: A Guidebook for His Students to This Field of Art”, Getty Publications, 1988, p.82.«Functional design considers the visual aspect, that is, the beauty, of an object as a component of its function, but not one that overwhelms its other primary functions.»
Max Bill (1908-1994)
As quoted in Gallery label from Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, September 15, 2010 – March 14, 2011. MoMA Collection: Max Bill, Kitchen Clock, 1956-1957.«Companies insist on printing critical instructions in tiny fonts with very low contrast. Labels cannot be read without flashlights and magnifying lenses. And when companies do design things specifically for the elderly, they tend to be ugly devices that shout out to the world “I’m old and can’t function!” We can do better.»
Donald A. Norman
Donald A. Norman, I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me, FastCompany, The New Business of Growing Old, 05 August 2019.«The pleasure of making things beautiful or useful involves your feelings as well as your thinking. When your original sketch evolves into a tangible, three-dimensional object, your heart is anxiously following the process of your work. And the love involved in making it is conveyed to those for whom you made it.»
Eva Zeisel (1906-2011)
