Functionally oriented design of this kind has always been strongly influenced by technological development, and will continue to be so in the future. The Braun pocket radios that we designed at the end of the 1950s would not have been possible without the new transistor technology at the time. Transistors were not only far smaller than valves, they also required much less power. That meant that for the first time it was possible to make a radio receiver that you could literally put in your pocket.
Rams describes design as closely connected to technological development. New materials, components and engineering methods can change what designers are able to make, sometimes creating product categories that were previously impractical. His example of Braun’s pocket radios shows how advances in electronics directly affected the size, portability and power requirements of consumer products.
The replacement of valves by transistors provided designers with smaller components that consumed less energy. This technical change did more than improve an existing radio: it made genuinely portable receivers possible and therefore altered how people could use them in everyday life.
The quotation presents technological innovation and product design as interdependent. Designers work within the possibilities and constraints of available technology, while new technologies can open opportunities for different forms, functions and patterns of use. Functional design, in Rams’s account, develops alongside engineering rather than independently of it.
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Dieter Rams
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