Dieter Rams
The industrial designer whose ten principles taught a century of products to say less, and mean more.
For three decades at Braun, Dieter Rams designed radios, record players and calculators that seemed to have always existed — objects so resolved they disappeared into use. His creed, Weniger, aber besser — less, but better — became the quiet manifesto of modern product design.
Good design is as little design as possible
Rams distilled his practice into Ten Principles of Good Design: good design is innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough, environmentally friendly, and — the line that governs all the others — as little design as possible.
Good design is as little design as possible.
An enduring grammar
The systems he built — the 606 Universal Shelving System for Vitsœ, still sold today — were designed to adapt and last rather than to be replaced. Decades later, his vocabulary of neutral surfaces and honest detail resurfaced, largely unacknowledged, in the products that now sit in every pocket.
