one of greatest modern industrial designer - dieter rams

Recently I have started using my Braun hand blender and it's accessory again. It has been sitting idle for many years. This reminded me how much I used to love buying Braun products. Not any more now. There is hardly anything Bruan make now that is worth the name it bears. Braun had started to lost its way almost immediately after Rams left. It lived on Rams' legacy for a few years and inevitably the product design steadily went downhill.

my braun clock

I want through no less than 3 Braun coffee machines and a coffee grinder, all of which are direct or indirect designs of Rams.

i also had a wall clock designed by Rams for 10 years until one day it stop working - i think a spider got in and was mashed by the clock gears

Over the years, as its fortune declined the company's product lines had been sold to many companies, some transacted a few times over. Today Braun brand is a confuse mess. There are unrelated entities that own different portions of products baring the Braun brand. Very few of these products bear any resemblance to those during the height of the company. To list a few:

Braun skincare
Braun household products is owned by De’Longhi Group, an Italian competitor with much lesser designs
Braun time pieces

Dieter Rams listed 10 principles on creating a good design:

• 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 is long-lasting
• Good design is thorough down to the last detail
• Good design is environmentally friendly
• Good design is as little design as possible

here is a rare interview of Dieter Rams in 2010 at the Design Museum on a special exhibit about his work




There is a good collection of pictures of his time-enduring designs at the event and more to read at Dezeen..

Also there is an article on Dieter Rams by The Telegraph in which Dieter Rams talked about Apple and all to widespread devaluing of design..

He expressed his view on design today - "I am troubled by the devaluing of the word 'design’. I find myself now being somewhat embarrassed to be called a designer. In fact I prefer the German term, Gestalt-Ingenieur."

Speaking of devaluing the word design. Just the other day I saw a TV spot where an insurance company marvels that no matter what your needs are, they have a policy engineered just for you. I call this devaluing of engineering. Tech media and marketing these days freely throw around the word innovation while often the writer has no idea the true meanings of the word.

One paragraph stands out for me:which foreshadows what Ive would say later.

"When Ive talks about Rams designing “surfaces that were without apology, bold, pure, perfectly-proportioned, coherent and effortless”, he could equally be talking about the iPod. “No part appeared to be either hidden or celebrated, just perfectly considered and completely appropriate in the hierarchy of the product’s details and features. At a glance, you knew exactly what it was and exactly how to use it.”"

In the recent unveiling of the iPhone 5C, Jony Ive remarked that the design of the 5c as beautifully and unapologistically plastic. He obviously was indirectly evoking many of Rams' design ethos that he believe Apple followed in creating the new 5C. Ive had said he admires and was greatly inspired by Dieter Rams.

i'd always dig his 606 universal shelving system

If you are interested in all of Dieter Rams work just search for Dieter Rams design and there are many sites with collections of photos of his designs. None has all his over 500 designs, however. Dezeen has a number of excellent articles where you can see photos of many of his iconic and time tested pieces.

If you are still thirty for more, check out related mid century German design at the ULM School of Design Archive.

dental unit 1961-1962

gorgeous Junghans kitchen clock, 1956-57 - great typefaces and devoid of any embellishment