Quotes from Dieter Rams

Some quotes from a recently released speech given by Dieters Rams in 1976 that I liked.

I am convinced that a well-thought-out design is decisive to the quality of a product. A poorly-designed product is not only uglier than a well-designed one but it is of less value and use. Worst of all it might be intrusive.

I completely agree with this. Looking good itself is not design, but it tends to be a side-effect of products that had a lot of thought put into them.

The majority of products that we encounter in our day-to-day lives scream for attention or try to impress us with their magnificence or minuscule size. These objects try to dictate our relationships with them. Good design creates powerful long-lasting relationships with products as good design creates objects with balanced proportions; at Vitsoe we go further by trying to create objects in balanced proportion with people.

Again, I completely agree with this. I see way too many products out there that just strive to catch my attention with how “cool” or “modern” they look, but these products themselves are not that great. Most of them are trash.

To use design to impress, to polish things up, to make them chic, is no design at all. This is packaging. When we concentrate on the essential elements in design, when we omit all superfluous elements, we find forms become: quiet, comfortable, understandable and, most importantly, long lasting.

This is entirely true and all too often overlooked. There’s a certain fakeness to products which do this that sets off an alarm bell that its creators spent more time trying to make it look impressive instead of actually being impressive.

At the same time thanks to all the members of staff, who sense that they have done a little more than just produce another short-lived consumer product.

That is undoubtedly a great feeling.

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