Ralph Caplan
Ralph Caplan is a contributing editor at Print magazine, a regular contributor to VOICE: The AIGA Online Journal of Graphic Design and has written articles for Design Quarterly, Interior Design, The New York Times, and House and Garden. He began his long and distinguished career in design journalism in the late 1950's as editor-in-chief at I.D. Magazine. His books include By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons (Fairchild, 2005) and Cracking the Whip: Essays On Design And Its Side Effects (Fairchild, 2005). Ralph has also written extensively for and about the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller. He is a director emeritus of the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, an honorary member of IDSA, and, in 2005, was a writer-in-residence at Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts.
“All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.”
“Nothing is more to the point than a good digression.”
“We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.”
“…no industrial designer worth his salt, or our attention, has been trained to work exclusively on any particular product, unless by accident. What he has been trained to do is practice a process called design, a process that includes esthetic choices but does not consist only of them.”
“Designers shouldn’t design for museums any more than mummies should die for them.”
“Attention must be paid’ is the cardinal rule of design discipline, for the designer is above all someone who pays attention to the situation at hand.”
“Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.”
“A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.”
“If more designers had bad backs, we would have more good chairs.”