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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.[

Weniger, aber besser.

Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

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