Who is Dieter Rams?
This post was originally posted on my tumblr blog as part of a project I’m doing at GSA. I have to write a blog over the year on what I believe to be good design. I quickly realised, however, that tumblr isn’t a great tool for writing lots of words. It’s ok for quotes, random thoughts, links and wee snippets of information, but not for what I want. So I’m writing here instead. I’ve altered the following since it was posted on tumblr.
You may be confused by the title of my tumblr. Who the heck is Dieter Rams? Dieter Rams is probably the most famous designer in the world, and he’s certainly my favourite. But why?
Dieter Rams was born on 20 May 1932 in Wiesbaden, Germany. He grew up during the war in Germany, being just young enough to avoid being called up to fight. He spent lots of his childhood in his grandfather’s joinery workshop. It was here that Rams says he adopted his concern ‘that things should be plain, straightforward.’
Who the heck is Dieter Rams? Dieter Rams is probably the most famous designer in the world, and he’s certainly my favourite. But why?
Aged only 15, right after the end of the war, Rams began to study architecture and interior design at Wiesbaden college. He spent two semesters there, and then went on to train in carpentry as an apprentice for three years. He was the ‘best of year’ in his whole state. Then he returned to Wiesbaden for a couple of years where he graduated with a diploma in interior design in 1953.
Rams wanted to be an architect, or a town planner. He aspired to tidy up the world and make it a better place. His first jobs were in architecture, before he took a job as an architect at German company Braun. It was here, when he started working in industrial design, that Rams made his most iconic work.
Until he retired in 1997, Rams designed over 500 products at Braun. He made radios, shavers, coffee makers and more. At the same time he created furniture for what was then a small company, Vitsoe. His 606 Universal Shelving System for Vitsoe (seen above) has been called ‘as close to perfect design as it is possible to get’. As I share my thoughts on what good design is here, I expect I’ll use some of Rams’ products as examples.
Sir Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer at Apple, says Rams “remains utterly alone in producing a body of work so consistently beautiful, so right and so accessible”. Jony Ive has famously been influenced by Rams’ designs in his own work, just take a look at the Braun radio and iPod below for example.
Dieter Rams once asked himself an important question: is my design good design? As there isn’t a finite way to measure good design Rams tried to express the ten most important principles for what he thought it was. These principles are quite famous among designers (sometimes referred to as ‘the ten commandments!’). Rams didn’t actually intend for them to become a static rulebook, although that’s often how they’re seen. He says this:
I summarized my philosophy in 10 points, and I’m actually very surprised that people today, especially students, still accept them. I didn’t intend these 10 points to be set in stone forever. They were actually meant to mutate with time and to change. But apparently things have not changed greatly in the past 50 years. So even nowadays, they are still accepted.
I have been given the task of exploring what I consider to be good design, and writing this blog. I think a good place to start is to investigate the design philosophy of my favourite designer. I am interested to see if I would accept all his points as relevant in the same way today.
Everything I have written so far has just been information on Rams, or opinions of other people. I haven’t really covered why I like Rams. I am attracted to the simplicity, the minimalism. I love the ruthless decluttering of his design, everything non-essential stripped away. And the wonderful proportions of everything, that just looks right. While so obviously laboured over, the form of his products look effortless. They just look like that’s the way they should be. Of course that coffee maker is that shape. Of course that shaver is like that. Why wouldn’t a radio look like that? It’s just right.
Why they are just right is trickier to think about. Is it that Rams found the perfect proportions? Do perfect proportions even exist? Is what I think looks right determined by my culture and surroundings, or some objective idea of beauty? I don’t know, it’s worth thinking about, but I’m not sure it matters all that much. One thing I have learned is that if I think something looks beautiful, so will someone else. Whenever I am designing something if it doesn’t look right I will know. I might not know why, but I just have a little niggle in the back of my mind. “That’s not quite there, Josh.” It is always worth tweaking and altering until I get to that point where it looks just right. “If if looks good it probably is.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about Dieter Rams I would recommend Phaidon’s ‘Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible’. It’s quite expensive as a hardcover but you can pick up a really neat specially designed iBooks version for a tenner.
