In Focus: Dieter Rams

Rams once explained his design approach in the phrase "Weniger, aber besser" which freely translates as "Less, but better".


As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, DIETER RAMS (1932-) emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.

• 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.

These ten principles defined Dieter Rams’ approach to “good design”. Each of the hundreds of products he developed during forty years with Braun, was unerringly elegant and supremely versatile. Units were made in modular sizes to be stacked vertically or horizontally. Buttons, switches and dials were reduced to a minimum and arranged in an orderly manner. Rams even devised a system of colour coding for Braun’s products, which were made in white and grey. The only splash of colour was the switches and dials.


Throughout his 30 years at Braun as design director, Dieter was responsible for not just the styling & design of Braun's products, but also influential in the design-inspired way of living that shaped the industry forever.


During Dieter's forty years at Braun, he developed products to be manufactured at vast scale and used daily by millions of people, yet he remained as provocative and questioning as ever in his quest for “good design”. “I think that good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times,” he said in a speech to the Braun supervisory board in 1980. “They should – and must – question everything generally thought to be obvious. They must have an intuition for people’s changing attitudes. For the reality in which they live, for their dreams, their desires, their worries, their needs, their living habits. They must also be able to assess realistically the opportunities and bounds of technology.”


Rams and his staff designed many memorable products for Braun including the famous SK-4 record player and the high-quality 'D'-series (D45, D46) of 35 mm film slide projectors. He is also known for designing the 606 Universal Shelving System by Vitsœ in 1960.


Many of his designs — coffee makers, calculators, radios, audio/visual equipment, consumer appliances and office products — have found a permanent home at many museums over the world, including MoMA in New York.


In describing his style, Dieter says "in japanese they say: wabi sabi. together these two concepts mean 'tranquility, simplicity, balance’, but also ‘liveliness’. this is a point of reference for me..."

[Source]
Designboom
Design Museum
Wikipedia