Dieter Rams, legendary industrial designer from Braun in the 1950s and ’60s, pretty much invented my design aesthetic. I can’t imagine what the world of technology would look like without his pioneering work. Brilliant.
I especially like his design principle #10: “Good design is as little design as possible.”
I probably didn’t hear of Dieter Rams until about ten years ago, but I’ve seen the world through his eyes since I was a kid. Most of these Braun products were not readily available in the U.S. in those days (the late ’70s and early ’80s), but their designs were so influential that just about everything you could get here still looked like them, or pale imitations thereof.
Jason Kottke also tidily sums up Rams’ influence on modern industrial design:
And hey, I didn’t know that a book had been published on Rams’ work. I bet Jony Ive has at least three copies.
I’ll take one of everything, please.
Source: Monoscope via kottke.org