Dieter Rams and Good Design
Why so many designer products are bad examples of good design
Dieter Rams Ten Principles of Good Design
Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally-friendly
Good design is as little design as possible
Following the impact of his work at Braun and Vitsoe, Dieter Rams has always been considered a designer’s designer. Recognized as much for his huge influence on Apple, Rams is arguably the most important and rightfully respected designer of the last fifty years. So important and revered has Dieter become that I think that design itself as an industry has been put on a pedestal and misunderstood in equal measure.
Watching an interview with Rams I was struck by his statement: “It seems to me that the term 'design' is mushrooming. Design has become a synonym for a backdrop, for beautiful appearance, for the stylish, and I fear we could lose our orientation at a point in time when orientation is needed as never before.”
So much of design now is about fashion and style – so often at the detriment of anything else. Rams’ work, typically taken at face value alone, means that design risks becoming more about visual aesthetic than true functionality or genuine design integrity. Take for example the iPhone itself. A device that is has long been recognized for its sleek increasingly minimalist, less-is-more design, and yet at the same time shrouded by users in phone cases because of the fact that the achievement of that aesthetic itself took on precedence in the design process. In its constant iterative product releases too, the iPhone, like most “designer” consumer products in the market today, are as much about temporary acquisition than anything else. It is perhaps in emulating Rams visual aesthetic that they deceive the user that they are in some way timeless when in fact they are increasingly temporary. Whilst Rams is rightfully recognized as a result of his influence I think it a shame that so much in design goes against his overall philosophy rather than genuinely building on his insight and principles.