Massimo Vignelli Quotes

We like design to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.

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. So come and see A Few Basic Typefaces.

As I said, at the time , if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead! Typefaces experienced an incredible explosion. The computer allowed anybody to design new typefaces and that became one of the biggest visual pollution of all times. … I still believe that most typefaces are designed for commercial reasons, just to make money or for identity purposes. In reality the number of good typefaces is rather limited and most of the new ones are elaborations on pre-existing faces. Personally, I can get along well with a half a dozen, to which I can add another half a dozen, but probably no more.

We need to value meaning over form. For the past 60 years, we've put form before meaning. If, over the next 50 years, we put meaning over form, then we might get the proper balance.

How can you communicate without knowing the rest of culture?

It’s a matter of discipline, and it starts by looking at the problem and collecting all the available information about it. If you understand the problem, you have the solution. It’s really more about logic than imagination.

It is not enough that something — a chair, an exhibition, a book, a magazine — looks good and is well designed. The 'why' and the 'how', the very process of design itself, must be equally evident and quite beyond the tyranny of individual taste.