Timeless Design
Last Friday I visited London’s Design Museum to see an exhibition of the work of Dieter Rams. Rams is an industrial designer from Germany who worked prolifically for Braun as their chief product designer between 1961 until 1995. The Design Museum is currently showcasing the electrical appliances Rams designed at Braun, such as record players and early hand-held film cameras.
What is so intriguing about Rams’ work is that although the function of these devices may have expired in the modern world, the designs still feel contemporary compared to the majority of products designed in more recent years. His record players, radios, and other audio appliances from the 60's and 70's certainly look of their era, but compared to 80's and 90's cassette and CD players, Rams' work is by far more refreshing and beautiful.
It’s no surprise then that today’s revered product designs, namely the iPod, iPhone, iMac and other Apple products (lead by head designer Jonathan Ive) have closely followed Rams’ principles. Rams’ influence on Apple’s product design is no secret and certainly nothing to be ashamed about. His principles of design have taken many years to learn and because of his dedication to the art, and evidently through Apple’s successful evolution, they are often described as “timeless”. Rams’ ten principles of good design are:
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design helps us to understand a product
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is long lasting
- Good design is consequent to the last detail
- Good design is concerned with the environment
- Good design is as little design as possible
What is so fascinating about these principles is that it is very difficult to argue against any one of them. They’re seemingly simple statements but incredibly difficult to achieve in practice.
When we think of design we tend to think of Rams’ 3rd principle “aesthetic”. An easy trap to fall into as a designer is to concentrate solely on aesthetics and then find a need to justify it. This often results in poetic nonsense. (Or if you’re in the advertising world it's more elegantly described as “BS”.) If we apply all the principles of design (from Rams' or others) the solution can be equally beautiful and more importantly it will have substance.
My approach to graphic and web design has always been a functional and minimal style. I try to achieve a working design with as little superficial flair and flourish as possible. Design has to start by looking at something in a factual and obvious light and progress laterally from there to find a perfect solution. It’s very easy to fall short and create design that is bland. It’s just as easy to overstep the mark into an overly stylised and obtrusive idea. But if you find that perfection in-between, you’re well on the way of creating “timeless” design.