Design As Art

An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form. — MAXIM GORKY

• If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.

• Art is always present when a people lives sincerely and healthily.

• The designer is therefore the artist of today, not because he is a genius but because he works in such a way as to re-establish contact between art and the public, because he has the humility and ability to respond to whatever demand is made of him by the society in which he lives, because he knows his job, and the ways and means of solving each problem of design.

• A triangle offers three escape routes, a square offers four. A circle has no corners, and the eye is forced to go round and round in it until it tears itself away with an effort.

• Art is not technique, as everyone knows, and an artist can create with anything that comes to hand.

• As a general rule, value is confused with price, and the things that cost most are the most luxurious.

• ‘Copying nature’ is one thing and understanding nature is another. Copying nature can be simply a form of manual dexterity that does not help us to understand, for it shows us things just as we are accustomed to seeing them. But studying the structures of nature, observing the evolution of forms, can give everyone a better understanding of the world we live in.

• The circle has always represented and still represents eternity, with no beginning and no end. An ancient text says that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.