"You can never go wrong when you work with people who are smarter than you."
— Tibor Kalman
"I tried hard to antagonize people with an unwavering commitment to my work. It felt punk rock to be the hardest working — a reversal of the cliche slacker student. I enjoyed provoking by being on time, having a well-thought-through solution to the brief that broke with the statuesque, and working when others were at parties."
— Daniel Eatock on what he was like as a college student
"I never liked the term “graphic” [design]; it suggests the surface, while I always prefer what is underneath the surface. I try to avoid subjective decision making, decoration, and unnecessary graphics. I like ideas and concepts that inform or dictate the aesthetic. I prefer the idea to stand out rather than the aesthetics, the content to stand out rather than its display."
— Daniel Eatock
"Professional “design” just floats on the surface, is trend driven and premeditated to the point that it’s mostly dead and decorative. You can see its goals a mile away and it holds no mystery or depth. Anything built from necessity by the earnest effort of a user is going to have character, include ingenious solutions, and have common sense."
— Roman + Williams
"Keep your ego out of the solution, keep preconceived ideas to yourself, listen and focus on the goal of the project; whether it’s a film set, a home, a hotel, a restaurant, it has nothing to do with you! You are a tool for it to exist. You have to serve the goal."
— Roman + Williams
"Get as close to the finishing line as you can…then wing It at the end by the skin of your teeth—that creates magic, contradiction, conflict. A well-planned ending has no magic."
— Roman + Williams
"Study the mundane: delis, freeway off-ramps, unprofessionally designed spaces, makeshift spaces, spontaneously created spaces that had no planning. Study these and replicate them, and you learn a tremendous amount about people and you learn how phony and surface “design” actually is. Unconscious creation is special and it is our natural built world: “designed” spaces are usually only good for representing one thing in film: dishonest and lost characters."
— Roman + Williams
"If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move."
— Anthony Bourdain
"If you look at the careers of great entrepreneurs and you look at the moment they took their plunge, the plunge is rarely a great financial or material risk, it’s a social risk. At the moment they started their new businesses, everyone around them said ‘you’re an idiot’."
— Malcolm Gladwell (via raindog)
(Source: rustyameadows, via raindog)
"All of us laughing together and saying, “Yes, we have to do this."
— OK Focus on the essential elements of a brainstorm sesh
