John Maeda Quotes

Our economy is built upon convergent thinkers, people that execute things, get them done. But artists and designers are divergent thinkers: they expand the horizon of possibilities.

When people say, 'I don't get art' ... that means art is working.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

Too little confidence, and you're unable to act; too much confidence, and you're unable to hear.

Creativity's about ownership.

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

The problem isn't how to make the world more technological. It's about how to make the world more humane again.

If you are going to have less things, they have to be great things.

All I want to be is, someone that makes, new things and, thinks about them.

Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Good problem-seekers are in higher demand than good problem-solvers.

If you have no fear, no one has power over you.

Anyone with a computer and a design program can create a page layout. But unless you're trained in design, it won't look very good and it won't communicate very well.

Apple products aren't simple technologies by any stretch, but there is a beautiful simplicity to them.

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done.

If there were a prerequisite for the future successful digital creative, it would be the passion for discovery.

Think of the computer as a spiritual space for thinking.

I have a confession: I'm not a man of simplicity. I spent my entire early career making complex stuff. Lots of complex stuff.

In the '70s and '80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.

When you're younger, think less and do more; when you're older, do less and think more.

Corporations today, by their razor sharp focus on the 'bottom line' and quarterly earnings, have lost their ability to innovate.

Really great products, like @nest, have #design baked in from the beginning instead of slapped on at the end.

Information is expanding daily. How to get it out visually is important.

No place in the US better exemplifies the ethos to engineer new digital technologies than Silicon Valley

The difference between closing or opening your eyes is the choice between the imagined vs real. Blinking is only human.

Art shows us that human beings still matter in a world where money talks the loudest, where computers know everything about us, and where robots fabricate our next meal and also our ride there.

I don't really love computers.

One of the challenges to our nation today is overcoming the notion that art is kind of a nice-to-have, when in reality art is a need-to-have.

I don't like creating software anymore. It's too exact. It's like karate; there's no room for error.

The artist needs to understand the truth that lies at the bottom of an enigma.

Videogames are indeed design: They're sophisticated virtual machines that echo the mechanical systems inside cars.

As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively - especially when they are well-designed.

Growing up, I found I was good at two things: Art and Math. To hear my parents say it, though, it was only, 'John is good at Math.

Design provides solutions, art asks questions.

My role is to find strategic insights as to where design can have the most business impact. A designer can bring a viewpoint of not just aesthetics, but economics and usage.

Technology makes possibilities. Design makes solutions. Art makes questions. Leadership makes actions.

Design is about crafting an experience that is unfamiliar enough to feel novel, yet familiar enough to instill confidence.

Artists change how we see the world - and that can have value in the way people do business.

Teaching is the rare profession where the customer isn't always right and needs to be told so appropriately.

Research universities need excellent means to communicate and express their results to regular people.

Art is a conduit toward human needs and perception.

With regard to what is designed really well, I think people are the best-designed objects in the world. Seriously.

All artists yearn to struggle, when they struggle they know they're alive.

The best scientists that I've met are those that are humanists and scientists at the same time.

Knowledge makes everything simpler.

Communication in every which way is everything for the leader.

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.