Quotes from Yves Behar

For me, it's not about being the best designer. I'm interested in being the best partner. The best collaborator.

An ideal day for me is a combination of a fun-exciting creative moment with work partners, some laughs and games with my kids, a good surf session, and great conversation with friends around a meal.

I imagine a future with no waste; material innovations have already become exponentially more vast, and I do think the future needs to be cradle to cradle. If designed properly, one product could be used for many years before needing to be recycled, or its components reused.

Having one foot in design and the other in sustainable and social projects, I hear this question quite often: 'Why does the world need another chair?' My answer is that the world needs another chair/bicycle/car or any new product for that matter, like the world needs another book.

The Swiss can be very difficult.

I never felt truly at home in Switzerland.

The next step for me with the Up is how it talks with the rest of the home. It's an object that can tell the home where I am and what I'm doing.

Design needs a new relationship with the world, one that is more focused on our planet's needs.

When clients come to my design agency and say 'I want to be the Apple of this or that,' we say 'Okay, are you ready to be the Steve Jobs?' Few are up to the task.

Our principal role as designers is to accelerate new ideas and the adoption of new ideas.

Fuseproject was founded in 1999, and the notion behind it, which is alive and kicking today, is fusing different disciplines. Our teams are absolutely incredible at their own discipline, but most importantly, they're incredible at partnering with each other.

Integrating breakthrough technology into everyday products is always a challenge; at the same time, this is exactly how design makes tech products easily adoptable in life.

Every tech product on the body like Jawbone or in the home like August is different. But there are definitely principles that apply across the board for me, such as integration in everyday life and discretion.

The biggest challenge is that when people look at low price point products, they essentially invest less money in development, innovation, and new technology. And in order to innovate at a lower price point, and make sustainability attainable to the masses, you have to invest more. But that's counterintuitive for a lot of businesses.

What got me really excited about Tylko is the fact that it bridges the gap between tradition and technology. It expands the designer's ability to create a language, to create ideas, to create a set of proportions, a set of details, and to apply those across a really wide range of applications.

I've been influenced by some of the greatest designers. Charles Eames. And Bruno Munari in the '50s in Italy - when they had to retool the industry of war into an industry to help society. In a way, I'm influenced by designers that were there at a radical time of change.

I want to work on things that aren't self-evident, to propose things that are radically different and game-changing.

I'm interested in technology for the masses. Good tech design should not just be for enthusiasts but for the general public. It should be something that touches everyone.

I truly believe that we're about to enter a second golden age of design. The first one was in the '50s and '60s, when designers like Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, George Nelson and Dieter Rams were shepherds of the brands they were working with. They had influence over the products and how companies communicated and promoted themselves.

I truly believe that everything Sci-fi taught me as a child about an efficient and wondrous world will be happening in my lifetime.

I have been working with Hive, part of British Gas, on reinventing the thermostat. Now you can control your heating at the press of a button on your phone. As I say, design should permeate every part of society.

Design is a tool that either allows us to create new markets or disrupt existing ones.

Design certainly has a cosmetic, aesthetic aim. It always aims at making things beautiful. But relevance is just as important. I often say, 'If it isn't ethical, it can't be beautiful. But if it isn't beautiful, it probably shouldn't be at all.'

If you don't love something, it's not functional, in my opinion.