tlynchMAJune 1
Less, but Better: Thinking About Dieter Rams’ “Good Design Ten Commandments”
by Tim Lynch
Braun Sk61 (from Wikipedia)
German industrial designer Dieter Rams is known, if not revered, for his “functionalist” (arguably, reductive) and influential mass-produced consumer product designs (most famously from his time as head of design at Braun from 1961 to 1995): elegant slab-sided turntables (this model was nicknamed “Snow White’s Coffin”) and speakers, beautifully boxy radios, juicers, calculators, slide projectors, watches…and so on and so forth. His design philosophy was Weniger, aber besser (Less, but Better) and his designs embody this with their balance of simplicity, functionality, and beauty. Rams, however, felt this philosophy was being challenged, as design firm Vitsoe says:
Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design?
Consequently, Rams put forth his good design “Ten Commandments”:
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design helps a product to be understood
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is durable
- Good design is consistent to the last detail
- Good design is concerned with the environment
- Good design is as little design as possible
I’m going to look at several of Rams’ commandments in a bit more detail, focusing on how they may apply outside the industrial design world, instead to digital products. Rams’ thoughts on the consumer design process sound very familiar to those of us in web design:
The first thing was that it had to be very easy for people to use; it could not be overloaded with functions that only technicians could understand. Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible. We know most people don’t like to read instruction manuals. And also we had different functions in different colours; you can see that this yellow button is an important one. Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour.
