I’m collecting helpful quotes about the nature and importance of design. This is part one in a series of pages of quotes about different aspects of design. Many of the quotes I’ve sourced are about design in general, but also apply well to software design in all its many forms. What other quotes on the nature of design am I missing?

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

— Steve Jobs

People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.

— Paola Antonelli

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

— Edward Tufte

Design is intelligence made visible.

— Don Newgren

[Design is] a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

— Charles Eames

What is design? It’s where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together.

— Mitchell Kapor

Design isn’t just to satisfy requirements, but also to uncover requirements.

— Fred Brooks
The Design of Design

About the Author

Paul is a software design and development coach and mentor. He is available for consulting and training through his company, Virtual Genius LLC. He is the author of The EventStorming Handbook and major contributor to Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber. He is also the founder and chair for the Explore DDD conference.