On Good

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.

Paul Rand paraphrasing Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s quote:

I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Designing in pursuit of being original, or even interesting, can be a foolhardy prospect. Design that strives to be original for the sake of it, and typically at the expense of its real purpose of communication, often falls into a mire of stylistic tropes and shallow meanings.


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