Practical Design Quotes

For me, cooking is practical. That's the core of an engineer. Engineers are very practical designers and creative people. Every single thing I create has to have a purpose.

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design"... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it.

The sky is the limit as long as you keep the rooms practical, and I have become better at that since I had children. Function, form and organisation are all important.

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.

As a designer, everything is always about aesthetics mixed in with functionality and having that visual appeal. But you learn fast as a new parent with an infant that if it’s not deeply practical as well, then forget about it. Style wise, I wanted to design items that would work well in any nursery - regardless of gender.

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

In Paris, we call the people who make clothing 'couturiers' - they develop new clothing items - but actually, the work of designing is to make something that works in real life.

That era of designers being away with the fairies is gone... You've got to live in the real world.

When I became a mum myself, I really struggled to find great kids' clothes. Everything was either gorgeous but impossible to actually get open to change a nappy and expensive or poor quality.

No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel - anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions.

This is very much my philosophy as a fashion designer. I have never believed in design for design's sake. For me, the most important thing is that people actually wear my clothes. I do not design for the catwalk or for magazine shoots - I design for customers.

I like crafts that are made out of necessity because they're a little naive - you made it because you needed it.

When you buy a jacket, it’s important the pockets are big enough for a paperback!

There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.

My perfect bag would be practical but also have the stylish element to it; it would be bold and colourful. I would actually be able to open and close it. That would be a first.

Design isn't just about making things beautiful; it's also about making things work beautifully.

There is nothing nicer than a kitchen really made for a cook. Things that are designed to be used always have an innate beauty.

When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great.

You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff.

You can make clothing as art, but I like the idea of my clothes actually being worn and being useful to women.

The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck; it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it.