This is entry eight of a ten-part series based on Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design. The Journal asked writers and illustrators to contribute to the project. Each writer wrote on one of Rams’ principles; each illustrator reacted to a writer’s essay.

Taken together, Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design represent an extension of Bauhaus Modernism, which, while still offering useful guidance to practitioners today, has been successfully challenged by the Pop and Post-Modern generation. However, the principle “Good design is thorough down to the last detail” is equally applicable to design work that crosses ideological boundaries. In the context of the other nine principles it is something of a no-brainer. It could be argued that it simply reinforces the other tenets – after all, we need to have ‘something to be thorough in,’ such as ensuring innovation, usefulness, understanding, aesthetic beauty, environmental friendliness…you get the picture, but how else might we think of thoroughness?

Context is of vital importance here. When Rams was at Braun, industrial design was a smaller and more focused profession than it is today. The field has fragmented and grown and now encompasses speculative projects, critical proposals, provocative and experimental works. Recognising in what context an object belongs determines how thorough different aspects of its design need to be. It would be ridiculous to criticise a lack of manufacture-ability in a piece intended as a gallery one-off.

In mass-market design, there are guidelines many designers follow – guidelines that most of Rams’ tenets include. Thoroughness is manifested in a consideration of the user’s needs, yet designers sometimes test their work only on themselves. A designer can never experience their own product as if for the first time and can easily assume that everything will be clearly understandable. Living with your own prototypes is a good start but enabling others to do so is even more important.

It’s clear that Rams’ interpretation of thoroughness lies not just in diligence but in applying coherence to the otherwise arbitrary decisions designers face. He invents strategies and applies these across all aspects of the object. Mies reputedly said “God is in the details,” but more to the point, ‘He’ is in the consistency of those details. Rams is keen on his analogy that good design is like an English butler; there when you need him, in the background when you don’t. If the butler were wearing a hat with bells on it with his suit, we would notice. If he is going to be a jester he should wear the full outfit.

Today, designers need to be more thorough than ever before. Our increasing awareness of the damage caused by the overproduction of non-recyclable, high-embodied energy products – unethically manufactured and destined for landfills – means designers have a responsibility towards being thorough in areas that were off the radar for Rams and his contemporaries during most of their careers.

Tim Parsons wrote on Rams’ eighth principle, Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Mr Parsons has taught at numerous universities in England since 2002 and regularly contributes to design publications. His recently wrote Thinking Objects: Contemporary Approaches to Product Design and regularly records his thoughts on his blog, Object Thinking. Paul Blow created the above illustration based on Mr Parsons’ essay. Mr Blow is an editorial illustrator based in Dorset, UK. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Boston Globe, and Business Week.