Dieter Rams' 10 Principles for good designGood design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Dieter Rams was a product designer for Braun in the 50s and 60s. Plenty of Apple designs and forms have been directly influenced by Braun products designed by Rams. (Interesting comparison here) This is not so much about a design process but about guidelines. Typically a design brief or problem statement is used as the basic groundwork of restrictions for coming up with a design. Restrictions may sound like a bad thing, but in the context of problem solving and creativity, they provide the framework that concentrates, focuses, and allows the creativity to flourish into a well refined solution.
A basic set of principles that are always in the back of the mind can be a valuable tool when designing. Having this list of principles or personal guidelines that apply to all your work can not only be helpful, but can act as your own quality control. These restrictions keep the thought process focused so the creativity can also stay focused on what is important, the problem and the solution.
As someone matures as a designer, they will probably have their own list, either written or just in their mind. It will probably be evolved from a mix from others and things that have come from experiences. Either way, having a "list" in addition to the problem or brief will only benefit in the process and consequently in the end result.
2 comments:
Dieter Rams is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring and influential designers of his time and definitely still today. His ability to hammer our the details in a product but still keep it minimal and not add any unnecessary parts was amazing. And its widely know that Apple products are very closely related to Dieter Rams, and look how well they are doing by looking to the past.
I like how you tied the principles of Dieter Rams to basically what we are all trying to do now. This is especially applicable now when we are creating and working off of our own design briefs for the teapot project. Writing that really did make me realize how important it is to have a certain amount of constraints when designing anything
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