The Twitter feed of Brian Eno, one of the inventors of the Oblique Strategies cards, which are reputed to stimulate creativity by suggesting random constraints along the path of Art, hipped us to this promo for a video featuring designer Dieter Rams, who has his own gimmick, the 10 Principles Of Good Design. The video is a teaser on the Vimeo platform for “Rams,” a documentary about Mr. Rams, with music from Mr. Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.
Here are the Principles from our pal Dieter:
- 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.
Dieter Rams, of the Braun Citromatic.
Dieter Rams, of the legendary 606 shelf system.
Dieter Rams, the spiritual design father of Apple designers.
Dieter Rams, of this thing.
Unobtrusive, good design is. What the heck is this unobtrusive thing, anyway? Principle 5, unobtrusive!
Trusting in Principle 4, that design is understandable, we, the user, would have guessed it was a pencil sharpener and attempted self-expression by jamming a Ticonderoga No. 2 in that fire hole. Anyway, unobtrusive, we get it. Sometimes design goals are in tension with one another.
We appreciate Dieter’s Designer Workspace, the whiteness, the clutter-free clean surfaces, the small accents of color, the red typewriter.
The workspace of Mr. Good Design announces all these things, and the more you look, the more you see:
POWER CORDS! They weren’t as visible in the hi-res Vimeo trailer but the other clip captured them. Not even Dieter Rams, in his inner sanctum, can minimalize away the wad of cordage that haunts all of our backgrounds.
