What Paul Graham thinks about design
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.
Paul Graham did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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19 dated positions, 2002 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Paul Graham has said — not written or endorsed by them.
Our readingThe position argued from most often is that taste is not merely preference: design can be good or bad, and a maker can be wrong about which. What follows is a list of what good design does, with simplicity, redesign and a single decider rather than a committee returning most often.
Their wordsSaying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.
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Our readingPrewar watch movements were often designed to fit the rectangular cases that were fashionable then.
Their wordsPrewar movements were often designed to fit in the rectangular cases that were in fashion then.
- 23 years earlier
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Their wordsYou need a good sense of design to judge good design. And there is no correlation, except possibly a negative one, between people's ability to recognize good design and their confidence that they can.
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Their wordsThe place to fight design wars is in new markets, where no one has yet managed to establish any fortifications. That's where you can win big by taking the bold approach to design, and having the same people both design and implement the product.
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Their wordsEveryone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design-- deciding too early what a program should do.
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Their wordsGreat software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty. If you look inside good software, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too.
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Their wordsEmpathy is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one. Some hackers are quite smart, but when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists.
- 4 months earlier
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Our readingDesign is for users, but you have to design what the user needs rather than what he says he wants.
Their wordsThe answer to the paradox, I think, is that you have to design for the user, but you have to design what the user needs, not simply what he says he wants.
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Their wordsYou're most likely to get good design if the intended users include the designer himself. When you design something for a group that doesn't include you, it tends to be for people you consider to be less sophisticated than you, not more sophisticated. That's a problem, because looking down on the user, however benevolently, seems inevitably to corrupt the designer.
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Their wordsIn practice, to get good design you have to get close, and stay close, to your users. You have to calibrate your ideas on actual users constantly, especially in the beginning.
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Their wordsMorale is another reason that it's hard to design something for an unsophisticated user. It's hard to stay interested in something you don't like yourself. To make something good, you have to be thinking, "wow, this is really great," not "what a piece of shit; those fools will love it."
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Their wordsI'm inclined to think there isn't-- that good design requires a dictator. One reason is that good design has to be all of a piece. Design is not just for humans, but for individual humans. If a design represents an idea that fits in one person's head, then the idea will fit in the user's head too.
- 11 months earlier
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Their wordsSaying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.
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Their wordsWhen you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance.
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Their wordsif something is ugly, it can't be the best solution. There must be a better one, and eventually someone will discover it.
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Their wordsGood design solves the right problem. The typical stove has four burners arranged in a square, and a dial to control each. How do you arrange the dials? The simplest answer is to put them in a row. But this is a simple answer to the wrong question.
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Their wordsGood design looks easy. Like great athletes, great designers make it look easy. Mostly this is an illusion. The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite.
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Their wordsGood design is redesign. It's rare to get things right the first time. Experts expect to throw away some early work. They plan for plans to change.
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Our readingGood design can copy: the greatest masters decide it is more important to be right than original.
Their wordsA novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important to be right than original.
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Their wordsNothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems. Genes count for little by comparison: being a genetic Leonardo was not enough to compensate for having been born near Milan instead of Florence.