15 Things You Didn't Know About Dieter Rams
Get to know one of the world's greatest industrial designers, on the occasion of his 82nd birthday.
Image via Complex Original
82 years ago today, the future of product design changed forever when Dieter Rams came bouncing into this world in Wiesbaden, Hessen Germany. Though it would take another 15 years before his design studies would begin in earnest, when he enrolled in the Wiesbaden School of Art to study architecture and interior design, the seeds of creativity had already been planted.
Shortly after graduating (with honors) in 1953, Rams took a position with a Frankfurt-based architect. Two years later, he moved on to worldwide consumer products company Braun as an architect and designer, where Rams took an artistic approach to product design, creating items that were forward-thinking in both their functionality and technology. By 1961, he was Braun’s Chief Design Officer, a position he held until 1995.
In honor of Rams’ 82nd birthday, Gestalten is re-releasing Less But Better—Rams’ groundbreaking (and long out of print) work on the basics of good design. Here are 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Dieter Rams.
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Rams' design philosophy can be summed up with 10 basic principles.
Throughout his career, Rams and his fellow designers adhered to a list of 10 simple principles. They are: Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product easy to understand. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible. Though he contended that these rules should not be binding—that like technology, good design is an evolving process—Rams' foresight makes these rules just as essential today.
Rams was eco-friendly before eco-friendly was a popular concept.
In his list of guiding principles, Rams stated that "Design can and must maintain its contribution toward protecting and sustaining the environment. This does not just include combating physical pollution, but the visual pollution and destruction of our environment as well." In other words: There's no place for bad design.
Rams landed at Braun as part of a bet.
Rams' introduction to Braun—or Radio Braun as it was then known—happened by accident, really. "I didn't know Braun at all," Rams says in Less But Better, "but applied nevertheless, along with my colleague. It was sort of a bet as to who of us would get a response. I was the one who got an answer. However it arrived so much later that I had forgotten I even applied."
Braun influenced Rams as much as Rams influenced Braun.
Though Rams admits that a 40-year run with the same company for any designer is rare, he claims that his "bond with Braun and the straightness of my path are neither accidental or coincidental. The company influenced me strongly as a designer with its special history, with its concepts, and with its undertakings. My design ideals were shaped within the framework of Braun, and it was Braun products that I primarily designed."
But Braun design was a team effort.
Though many single out Rams' work as the equivalent of "Braun design," the designer is quick to point out that "I in no way regard myself to be the 'inventor' of Braun design. I was also not the executor of the idea of others." Instead, Rams talks about the collaborative effort that each product required.
The SK4 was his first major product for Braun.
A year after being hired at Braun, Rams released his first major product for the company: the SK4 record player, which he developed with Hans Gugelot. The duo did away with the traditional wooden cabinet in which previous record players had been built, and opted for a much more modern, industrial design. Also revolutionary was their decision to place the controls on top of the player—instead of on the side—making them easier to access. The final touch, a Plexiglas lid, was actually a last-minute addition to the design, and the element that earned the product the nickname "Snow White's Coffin."
1958 was a very good year for Rams.
In 1958, Braun set another industry standard when Rams and his team decided to improve the home sound system yet again with one simple tweak: mounting the loudspeaker on a metal stand. It was during that very same year that Braun also launched the T3/4/41, Germany's first pocket-sized transistor radio.
Rams also dabbled in furniture design.
Rams' early work extended beyond technology products and even beyond Braun. In 1960, he worked with British furniture company Vitsœ to design two of their signature products, which are still available today—the 620 Chair Program, which allows you to switch out arms and other components to adapt to changing needs and interior redesigns, and the 606 Universal Shelving System, a modular shelving system that can be found in homes around the world (and as part of the permanent collection at New York City's Museum of Modern Art).
The Audio 1 radio was designed to sit atop the 606 Universal Shelving System.
Rams believed that good design should be all-encompassing, a philosophy he championed with the release of Braun's Audio 1 sound system in 1962. In addition to its hi-fidelity sound, the Audio 1 boasted a smaller, slimmer, and more compact construction, and was specifically designed to look perfect sitting atop one of Rams' own 606 Universal Shelving Systems. Vitsœ even began manufacturing additional components for its shelving so that the system, and its accompanying L 46 speakers, could be more easily integrated directly into the unit.
Museums around the world have paid tribute to Rams' work.
In 1980, an exhibition of Rams' work entitled Design: Dieter Rams opened at the International Design Center in Berlin in conjunction with the publication of a book by the same name. It went on to tour a number of cities around the world, including Helsinki, Milan, London, and Amsterdam. In 2008, a second exhibition—Less and More—was introduced in Japan and spent the next four years touring the world, landing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 2011 to 2012.
Artist Richard Hamilton was greatly influenced by Rams' designs.
British pop artist Richard Hamilton was open about his admiration for Rams' work and its influence on his own creations. Hamilton even contributed some words to the 1980 retrospective of Rams' work at the International Design Center in Berlin, stating that, "My admiration for [Rams' work] is intense, and I have for years been uniquely attracted towards his design sensibility. So much so that his consumer products have come to occupy a place in my heart and consciousness that the Mont Sainte-Victoire did in Cézanne's."
Apple digs his stuff.
In the 2009 documentary Objectified, Rams states that "In my experience, users react very positively when things are clear and understandable. That's what particularly bothers me today, the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to market." He goes on to state that "Today you only find a few companies that take design seriously, as I see it. And at the moment that it is American company. It is Apple."
Over the years, many design critics have noted Braun's influence on Apple's designs. In 2012, Cult of Mac created an entire photo gallery documenting the similarities.
Rams believes that imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery.
In 2012, Rams told Fast Company about an incident in which Philippe Starck, by way of introduction, exclaimed that "Apple is copying you!" "I said, Mr. Starck, I don't feel so. For me, it's a compliment that they use the [same] basic thinking about what design can be."
Rams considers himself an architect, not a designer.
In a 2012 interview with Fast Company, Rams clarified that "People want to know why I'm a designer. I'm not a designer, I'm an architect." The distinction, he says, is that his degree is in architecture. He goes on to note that, "Since design is becoming more and more popular—and not in the right direction, in my opinion, I prefer to come back to the architecture of things."
The T2 Cylinder cigarette lighter is one of Rams' favorite products.
Launched in 1968, the T2 Cylinder cigarette lighter, which pioneered the use of a magnetic ignition device, is one of Rams' all-time favorite Braun products. A smoker himself, Rams has stated that he loves to design lighters as "small sculptural objects." New York City's Museum of Modern Art has a T2 as part of its permanent collection.