— iainclaridge.net

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

The great artist is the simplifier.

Chaos often breeds life, where order breeds habit.

Man fixes some wonderful erection of his own between himself and the wild chaos, and gradually goes bleached and stifled under his parasol. Then comes a poet, enemy of convention, and makes a slit in the umbrella; and lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision, a window to the sun.

Love the pitcher less and the water more.

No surface shines brighter, than the light that burns beneath it.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and be faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

It is by logic we prove, but it is by intuition we discover.

The quieter you become, the more you hear.

Bellygoat boom at ache of day bang.

The more critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes... Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under it's dominion, the individual is pauperized.

First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something

Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in your books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves. Those who, either now or after I am dead, shall rely upon themselves only and not look for assistance to anyone besides themselves, it is they who shall reach the topmost height.

I know what the great cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddha.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly understood; an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

No underrobes,
bare ass exposed -
gust of spring wind.

The details are not the details. They make the design

It is very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

Think more, design less.

The difference between good design and great design is intelligence.

Talent borrows, genius steals, shit copies.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.

In this world
Even butterflies
Must earn their keep.

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Good design means not leaving traces of the designer and not overworking the design. If you overdo the design it will touch the beholder's consciousness. I think that when people and things are within the boundaries of consciousness they are at their farthest from heaven.

"Childlikeness" has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.

Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It's such a simple thing - that's why people can't do it.

In mountain light, all sounds return to silence.
All that remains, the temple bell.

Think sideways!

When we are not sure, we are alive.

Simplify and add lightness.

Millions of people, unseeing, joyless, bluster through life in their half sleep, hitting, kicking, and killing what they have barely perceived. They have never learned to see or they have forgotten that man has eyes to see, to experience.

Tomorrow there will be less.

Admit constraints: then, having admitted, fill with discovery.

A design should have some tension and some expression in itself. I like to compare it with the lines on a football field. It is a strict grid.
In this grid you play a game and these can be nice games or very boring games.

Grids do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in relation to the content.
We never start with a grid. We start with an idea which is then translated into a form, a structure.

Beauty will result from the form and the correspondence of the whole, with respect to the several parts, of the parts with regard to each other, and of these again to the whole; that the structure may appear an entire and complete body, wherein each member agrees with the other, and all necessary to compose what you intend to form.

I'm actually an untidy person. I'm not ordered at all. In some senses I have to use grids to bring some order to the chaos that's whirring around in my head.

To say a grid is limiting is to say that language is limiting, or typography is limiting. It is up to us to use these media critically or passively.

The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropiate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an
art that requires practice.

I still reserve the right, at any time, to doubt the solutions furnished by the Modular, keeping intact my freedom, which must depend on my feelings rather than my reason.

The grid, like any other instrument in the design process, is not an absolute. It should be used with flexibility, and when necessary it should be modified or abandoned completely for a more workable solution.

The use of the grid implies;
the will to systematize, to clarify,
the will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate,
the will to cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity,
the will to rationalize the creative and technical production processes,
the will to integrate elements of colour, form and material,
the will to achieve architectural dominion over surface and space,
the will to adopt a positive, forward-thinking attitude,
the recognition of the importance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.

There is something obscure which is complete before heaven and earth arose; tranquil, quiet, standing alone without change, moving without peril. It could be the mother of everything. Not knowing its name, I call it Tao.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.

If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.

Thirty spokes meet at a nave;
Because of the hole we may use the wheel.
Clay is moulded into a vessel;
Because of the hollow we may use the cup.
Walls are built around a hearth;
Because of the doors we may use the house.
Thus tools come from what exists,
But use from what does not.

The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common.

We invent nothing, truly. We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been given, as the mystics say. We have only to open our eyes and hearts, to become one with that which is.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields or the woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

The more talking and thinking, the farther from the truth.

You will always exist in the universe in one form or another.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suspect.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

If you keep shouting, you are not making communication any better. You are only removing talking and whispering from the system.

The best things in life are nearest: breath in your nostrils light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties in your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

Naked
on a horse
in pouring rain!

…is innovative
…makes a product useful
…is aesthetic
…helps a product to be understood
…is unobtrusive
…is honest
…is durable
…is thorough to the last detail
…is concerned with the environment
…is as little design as possible

Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.

If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, “Make it look good!” That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

The difference between a Designer and Developer, when it comes to design skills, is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Design is 70% dealing with people, 3% the idea, 2% selling the idea, 2% the brief, 2% being pig headed, 1% printing, 3% eye for detail, .6% invoices, 2% coffee, .7% tracking, .1% warm glow, .6% panic, 1% 4am, .6% staring, .2% checking, 1% letting go, .8% keeping hold, .7% estimates, .3% checking, .4% proofs, .1% colour, .9% understanding, .4% marketing, 1% checking, .8% beach ball, .5% mice, .3% keynotes, .4% persuasion, .2% bragging, .5% smiling, 2% knowing when to stop.

"God is dead!" — Nietzsche.
"Nietzsche is dead!" — God.

Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side, a dark side and it holds the universe together.

We may be small but we are big where it counts

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The trouble-makers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules,
and they have no respect for the status-quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify, or vilify them.
But the only thing
you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.

When technology delivers basic needs, user experience dominates.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

TEN DESIGN LESSONS
1. Respect “the genius of a place.”
2. Subordinate details to the whole.
3. The art is to conceal art.
4. Aim for the unconscious.
5. Avoid fashion for fashion’s sake.
6. Formal training isn’t required.
7. Words matter.
8. Stand for something.
9. Utility trumps ornament.
10. Never too much, hardly enough.

Youth is not a time of life — it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over limidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years; people Years wrinkle away the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self distrust, fear and despair — these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what’s next, and the joy and the game of life. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. So long as your hearts receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the infinite, so long as you are young. When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed and may g-d have mercy on your soul.