Dieter Rams Quotes

Less, but better.

Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, 
and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design

Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour

Good design is innovative. Good design must be useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. And last but not least, good design is as little design as possible.

Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

Or as Dieter Rams, head of design at Braun, maintains, “Good design is as little design as possible.

Ive was a fan of the German industrial designer Dieter Rams, who worked for the electronics firm Braun. Rams preached the gospel of “Less but better,” Weniger aber besser, and likewise Jobs and Ive wrestled with each new design to see how much they could simplify it.

The composition of these rooms represents the basic intention behind my design: simplicity, essentiality and openness.

Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That’s its role.

Ive was a fan of the German industrial designer Dieter Rams, who worked for the electronics firm Braun. Rams preached the gospel of “Less but better,” Weniger aber besser, and likewise Jobs and Ive wrestled with each new design to see how much they could simplify it. Ever since Apple’s first brochure proclaimed “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” Jobs had aimed for the simplicity that comes from conquering complexities, not ignoring them. “It takes a lot of hard work,” he said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.

Weniger, aber besser.

Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

Things which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different,” said Dieter Rams.[

Dieter Rams gave us less, but better and the world is a better place for it. Here I’m giving the world more, but worse and no doubt the world is poorer for it.

Although his focus was on the Macintosh, Jobs wanted to create a consistent design language for all Apple products. So he set up a contest to choose a world-class designer who would be for Apple what Dieter Rams was for Braun. The project was code-named Snow White, not because of his preference for the color but because the products to be designed were code-named after the seven dwarfs. The winner was Hartmut Esslinger, a German designer who was responsible for the look of Sony’s Trinitron televisions. Jobs flew to the Black Forest region to meet him and was impressed not only with Esslinger’s passion but also his spirited way of driving his Mercedes at more than one hundred miles per hour.

Good Design is as little design as possible – less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity. – Dieter Rams Dieter Rams is one of great pioneers of industrial design. For decades he worked at Braun and pioneered state-of-the-art radios, audio equipment, cameras and furniture. He has been exalted by many as the leader of ‘minimalist, intuitive design’. Apple’s lead designer, Jony Ive, is one of many who have been massively influenced by his style.1 Rams is celebrated for his 10 principles of good design2 – something that is critical today. Keep these principles in mind as you design your app. According to Rams good design: • Is innovative • Makes a product useful • Is aesthetic • Makes a product understandable • Is unobtrusive • Is honest • Is long-lasting • Is thorough down to the last detail • Is environmentally friendly • Has as little design as possible. Design matters because competition in the app world is heating up and because people can be fickle. Twenty-six per cent of users will open your app once and never use it again.3 From that very first use you need to be able to deliver value to a user; you need to make them smile; you need them to say, ‘Wow, this is really cool!’; you need to set an expectation and deliver. You’re still at a stage where every dollar counts, so you need to find a way to get your design work done as quickly as possible, for as little money as possible (simultaneously, you want to be grooming your designer to join you full time when you get funding in place). Your goal is to get a designer to translate your wireframes into pixel-perfect mockups of your app. That basically means a set of screenshots and files that will look the same – pixel for pixel – as each screen of your app. Once those files are prepared, it is relatively simple work passing them on to your developers to implement as software code. One good way to expedite the design process is to become a bit of an expert in what constitutes a great app design (that’s what great product people do). Even if you aren’t a natural at design, that doesn’t mean you can’t teach yourself what works. Mobile-app design, I find, is a lot easier than website design because it’s a lot simpler. It is straightforward to tell if something is functional on mobile. It’s also very easy to get lots of opinions quickly by sharing the app – or just the screenshots of your app – with anyone who’ll listen. Ask pointed questions about specific things, and record all the feedback you get.

Dieter Rams was the lead designer at Braun for many years. He is driven by the idea that almost everything is noise. He believes very few things are essential. His job is to filter through that noise until he gets to the essence.