Dieter Rams: Principles for good design

msandford 13 years ago |

This is terrible blog material because it's not something you can digest in five minutes or copy and use on your own startup.

But if you can take the time to figure out what he means you can use it to help judge your own creations and see where they are lacking.

andorekandore 13 years ago | |

In other words... it wasn’t designed very well...?

msandford 13 years ago | | |

I'm not sure it was designed to be blog material. There's a fundamental difference between "A LIST OF 10 FUNNY CAT PICTURES" and "Internalize these 10 ideas to not suck as a designer"

rahul_rstudio 13 years ago | | |

Well said. This article is meant to be useful, and act as a simple reference while designing your own products. And they are based on Dieter Ram's years of experience as a designer.

Just because, it's simple doesn't mean it's not valuable. The best experts I know make things as simple as they possibly can.

DenisM 13 years ago |

#1 Good design is innovative

I'm sure there is plenty of good design that is not innovative. In fact, there is lots of value in sticking with what is familiar to the user, i.e. avoid innovation.

dmix 13 years ago | |

Just because it's innovative doesn't mean it's non-intuitive or difficult to use.

A few of the other points reinforce exactly that, such as:

#4 Good design makes a product understandable

#10 Good design is as little design as possible

The fact Dieter stripped out the inessential aspects and frivolous features, focused on the intended function and made simple products aesthetically pleasing was innovative at the time. And still would be today for most consumer electronics.

ctdonath 13 years ago | |

If not innovating, why bother?

cremnob 13 years ago |

This is a clip from the documentary Objectified with Dieter Rams discussing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtHKCQUD2k