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Tag Tag Product design
Good design is as little 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.
Dieter Rams ·

Quotes

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That‘s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Steve Jobs · The Guts of a new Machine, 2003 · Secondary source

“I once said that my aim is to leave out everything superfluous in order to allow the essential to come through.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“A record player, a kitchen appliance, a slide projector or a shaver with disorderly, chaotic, confusing or overloaded design cannot fulfil its functions. The harmony of a design too, its aesthetic quality, also has a functional purpose—it facilitates a positive emotional relationship between a device and its user.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“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.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“Colour was always used extremely sparingly [in Braun hi-fi appliances] and then only to provide information.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“My aim was to design [door] handles that were as simple as possible. Our living environment today is complex and polymorphic enough. I have always striven to couteract this chaos.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

Works

Dieter Rams · 1995
Less but better

An account of Dieter Rams’s design principles, methods and ethics, centred on simplicity, usefulness, durability and responsible product design.

Read summary·Explore 8 quotes

Related Tags

Simplicity 35 Restraint 12 Technological change 12 Aesthetics 6 Clarity 5 Braun 5 User experience 2 Industrial design 2 Essentialism 2 Usability 2 Ten Principles for Good Design 2 Design ethics 2 Less, but better 2 Functionality 1 Form and function 1 Functionalism 1 Human-centred design 1 Transistor technology 1 Miniaturisation 1 Colour coding 1 Visual hierarchy 1 Functional aesthetics 1 Visual order 1 Everyday objects 1