Inspiration can often seem illusive and out-of-reach when you need it most.

Unfortunately, you often can't call it a day when you're feeling uninspired or frustrated by your designs -- or lack thereof. Oftentimes, you're working on a strict deadline, keeping you up late into the night thinking, How can I make this design great?

When this is the case, it's likely helpful to read some wisdom from some true masters of design. Here, we've cultivated a list of 27 inspiring and thought-provoking quotes that will undoubtedly get your creative juices flowing.

Keep reading, and remember, it's like Maya Angelou said -- "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

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27 Quotes About Design to Get Your Creativity Flowing

1. "Have no fear of perfection -- you'll never reach it." -- Salvador Dali, artist


2. "Design is intelligence made visible." -- Alina Wheeler, author

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3. "Everything is designed. Few things are designed well." -- Brian Reed, front-end developer and musician


4. "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." -- Maya Angelou, author, poet, civil rights activist


5. "Design adds value faster than it adds costs." -- Joel Spolsky, web programmer, writer, and creator of Trello


6. "The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring." -- Paul Rand, graphic designer


7. "Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood." -- Margaret Oscar, designer


8."Make it simple, but significant." -- Don Draper, fictional character on Mad Men


9."Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals." -- David Ogilvy, advertising tycoon, known as the "Father of Advertising"


10. "Every great design begins with an even better story." -- Lorinda Mamo, designer

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11. "Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future." -- Robert L. Peters, designer and author


12. "The function of design is letting design function." -- Micha Commeren, designer


13. "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." -- Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, Inc.

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14. "The more I deal with the work as something that is my own, as something that is personal, the more successful it is." -- Marian Bantjes, designer and author


15. "Design is not a single object or dimension. Design is messy and complex." -- Natasha Jen, designer and educator


16. "Design is the intermediary between information and understanding." -- Hans Hoffman, artist and teacher


17. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French writer and poet


18. "Design is a formal response to a strategic question." -- Mariona Lopez, business owner


19. "Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style." -- Massimo Vignelli, Italian designer

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20. "The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design." -- Adam Judge, author


21. "Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated." -- Paul Rand, graphic designer


22. "It's through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good." -- Paula Scher, graphic designer and painter


23. "Good design is good business." -- Thomas Watson Jr., businessman, second president of IBM


24. "Accessible design is good design." -- Steve Ballmer, American businessman and former CEO of Microsoft


25. "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems." -- Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO

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26. "I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those two things." -- Lindo Leader, graphic designer and creator of the FedEx logo


27. "Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking." -- Ellen Lupton, designer and educator

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Originally published Feb 11, 2019 7:00:00 AM, updated March 11 2022