The 10 Design Theses of Dieter Rams
Jens Meiert, March 25, 2008.
This entry is filed under Design.
Moving up industrial design on my agenda and studying the work of German top designer Dieter Rams, who was responsible for the mostly great design of Braun products for about 30 years, I considered it to be useful to bring up his design theses again:
- 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 has longevity.
- Good design is consequent down to the last detail.
- Good design is environmentally friendly.
- Good design is as little design as possible.
You will be with me when I say that I really like these “commandments”, as they’re sometimes referred to. They might remind you of Edward Tufte’s work concerning information design and “data honesty”, they might also remind you of my own definition of design, that good design needs to be durable, and that our industry suffers from bad design since we’re often dealing with decoration instead (even though I’m just a shy design theorist).
Anyway, design history and research of good design do confirm that truly good designers rarely just ornament but definitely focus on use and usability. And making a product useful and usable never meant that it doesn’t need to be appealing. This still is, and will always be, one of the key lessons the hordes of fresh, so-called designers need to learn. That does especially but not exclusively affect our industry, and the web and application designers within.
Read More
Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:
Comments
-
On March 25, 2008, 21:27 CET, Lynne said:
“elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language” - This is such a powerful statement at the heart of Dieter Rams that more often than not completely missed by most. His philosophy for good design is undeniably the core at which every one in our field does (or should) try to drill down to regardless of the amount of time it take (which can take a while). It is amazing when you look at our field in this manner how broad we truly start before we start to even touch on these design values that if achieved will bring undeniable success. I knew of these “commandments” before they were posted here but I never took the time to understand where they came from really. In any case these 10 “good design” standards should be ingrained in every designer in any application on platform.
-
On March 26, 2008, 21:06 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Lynne – true words!
