Design Analysis Quotes

I fervently believe in research as a necessity for good design, and I teach it that way.

I approve designs not because I think I am more gifted or somebody who can see ahead three or four years from now, but just to make sure that the design is a logical, rational decision, taken after analyzing pros and cons.

I'm experimenting in public. At the design grad schools, these are people sitting around in groups, putting their work on a wall, analyzing it and putting it back in a drawer. I think there's little risk in that.

I do think I know more about clothes than any 500 designers, because there's nothing like wearing them. You buy them, you study them, and you start to understand how they're crafted.

When I see a shoe, I deconstruct it in my head. It comes from spending childhood summers around my grandad's denim factory in Bury, watching the machinists turn fabric into clothes.

It's one of the curses of designing that when you look at anything, you're constantly thinking, Why? Why - why was it designed like that, and not like this?

I love every period in design history. Even the ugly ones.

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future.

Studying design has made me a much, much more astute observer of this aspect of business. And I'm working mightily to improve my empathic skills. I've dramatically improved my ability to read facial expressions - and I'm trying to be a better, more attentive listener.

I really don't over-theorize about design. I'd rather feel it than talk it to death. A lot happens as you unroll the design.