Dieter Rams

Love the look and feel of your smartphone? Thank Dieter Rams. His quietly innovative versions of household products, stripped of any extraneous features, continue to influence industrial design today. Throughout a celebrated career at the German manufacturer Braun and the furniture company Vitsœ, Rams created elegant and intuitive forms that remain timeless monuments to understatement and ease of use.

This exhibition surveys Rams’s prolific body of work—from radios, clocks, and cameras to kitchen appliances and furniture—and examines the longevity and impact of his design philosophies. In November 2018, he received our Collab Design Excellence Award, given to a design professional or manufacturer whose contribution to the field is inspirational.

Ten Principles of Good Design

In the 1970s, Dieter Rams redefined the parameters for successful mass-produced design by creating his Ten Principles of Good Design. These tenets continue to inspire makers around the world.

1. Good design is innovative.
The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

2. Good design makes a product useful.
A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

3. Good design is aesthetic.
The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

4. Good design makes a product understandable.
It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.

5. Good design is unobtrusive.
Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

6. Good design is honest.
It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

7. Good design is long-lasting.
It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years—even in today’s throwaway society.

8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.

9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

10. Good design is as little design as possible.
Less, but better—because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.