What’s your favorite famous creative quote of all time? We recently asked our designer community that very question and their answers were, well, inspiring.
While we offered a few creative quotes of our own to get things rolling, our design community wowed us with their response. The breadth of talent and style was inspiring—in fact, this may be one of our favorite Community Contests to date!
The six winning designs were turned into mobile and desktop backgrounds, available here for free download.
Below, we’ve rounded up 21 of our favorite famous creative quotes, with beautiful illustrations to match. Now sit back, relax and let the inspiration flow over you.
1. Stefan Sagmeister
“Having guts always works out for me!”
2. Maya Angelou
“You can’t use up creativity the more you use the more you have.”
3. Sigfried Giedion
“Art, indeed, began with abstraction.”
4. Anonymous
“The Earth without art is just eh.”
5. Paula Scher
“It’s through mistakes that you actually grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.”
6. Pablo Picasso
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
7. Rumi
“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.”
8. Mirko Ilić
“Think eight hours, work two hours.”
9. Milton Glaser
“There are three responses to a piece of design: yes, no and wow!”
10. Eugene O’Neil
“I will be an artist or nothing.”
11. Martha Graham
“There is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
12. Carl Jung
“But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.”
13. Art Buchwald
“The best things in life aren’t things.”
14. Joe Sparano
“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.”
15. Ang Lee
“With 3D you are right there immersed in the world.”
16. William Shedd
“A ship is safe in a harbor. But that’s not what ships are for.”
17. Frida Kahlo
“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
18. David Carson
“Graphic design will save the world right after rock’n’roll does.”
19. Massimo Vignelli
“If you do it right, it’ll last forever.”
20. Paul Rand
“Design is so simple. That’s why it’s complicated.”
21. Stefan Sagmeister
“Ensure it feels like it’s made by humans for humans.”