This is a wrap-up on 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.

Unfortunately, Mr Rams was not available for an interview. His thoughts on each principle, reproduced with permission from Vitsoe, come from conversation with Mark Adams, Managing Director of the furniture company.

Based on my experience as a designer, I have distilled the essentials of my design philosophy into ten principles. But these principles cannot be set in stone because, just as technology and culture are constantly developing, so are ideas about good design.

This is the last entry 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.

I am a big fan of Dieter Rams and his ten principles. This last principle sums up all previous nine principles into one:

Find as few solutions for as many problems as possible.

Which is a nearly perfect definition when you talk about design as product design. To understand its theoretic core you need to see that he uses two slightly different notions of design in the same sentence.

Good design is as little design as possible.

With design, as in “Good design,” he refers to design as a form of basic engineering. With design as in “little design” he refers to design as the process of giving shape. (In German, design is Gestaltung, literally: shaping.) If you replace the two notions of design with these more specific definitions, the sentence sounds less paradoxical (and less rhetoric):

Good engineering is giving as little shape as possible.

So good engineers avoid shaping objects? Isn’t engineering just that: giving shape to a concept? Yes, it is: Good engineers focus on shaping the necessary parts of a product. In other words:

In a perfectly engineered product every shape is necessary.

Which, of course, is consistent with the rhetoric in principles two, four and seven. The only way for me to add some opinionated salt to the ten principles – which, to me, read more like a poem than an engineering guideline – is that design also needs a break from total consistency to feel humane and approachable.

Oliver Reichenstein wrote on Rams’s tenth principle, Good design is as little design as possible. Mr Reichenstein is the founder of the design firm Information Architects. Lab Partners, Ryan Meis’ and Sarah Labieniec’s design and illustration studio, created the above illustration based on Mr Reichenstein’s essay. They have designed and illustrated for numerous clients including Monocle, Wired Magazine and HP.

This is entry nine 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.

Designers are not tree-killers or waste-makers. Rather, we are material utilizers, for better or worse. We create experiences, provide information, and promote interactions, whether it be in products, printed materials, or the spaces we inhabit. Rams was quite ahead of his time with his statement, “Good Design is environmentally friendly.” Today, environmentalism is all the rage. You’d be hard pressed to find a brochure, a piece of packaging, or even an iron that lacks a small statement or tiny leaf proclaiming its care for our world. Worse than that, big brands seem to tout their environmental concern – so much that there is almost a backlash to it.

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?

This is entry seven 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.

But what of pixels, or bits and bytes? If I died
tomorrow, I can confidently assume that the
books on my shelves will last a hundred years.
But the files on my laptop – where I’m typing
these words right now – won’t survive more
than a year or two. The words I’ve blogged not
much longer than that; the drives they live on
will fail, or else the space I’m no longer paying
for will be filled by someone else.

Does this mean they are inferior? Perhaps. But,
perhaps instead long lasting can now be mea-
sured not only in years, but in minds – not in
how long an object persists, but in how many
people it changes. A book that is read by mil-
lions but vanishes in the span of a decade does
more good than one that sits untouched for
millennia. Speaking of the destruction of the
Library at Alexandria, Borges said, “If a book
is lost, then someone will write it again, even-
tually. That should be enough immortality for
everyone.” Meaning, nothing lasts forever, but
some things last long enough.

This is entry six 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.

Good design is honest is a fine principle. Maybe even a great principle. But what does it really mean? What is honest in the scheme of capitalism, which is where design is a vital commodity?

Honest can be interpreted in a very literal way. For instance, good design is original. That is, it is not stolen. It may derive from many inspirations (or just one) but in its final form it is unique unto itself. It can also be defined as spiritual. For instance, good design is pure design. In other words, the form is true to the function, and the materials are true to the values underscoring the reason for designing it. Finally, it could be viewed from an aesthetic perspective: honesty is beauty or not depending on the designer’s goal.

Is the opposite of honest design, design that lies? And if it lies, in what way? Bad materials? Poor form? Trivial qualities? False! Pretentious! Kitsch!

Frankly, I never use the word honest when it comes to design. It is one of those high falutin’ modernist buzzwords, used to cover over the fact that most design is meant to manipulate behavior. Is that honest? Well, honestly, if we admit the fact that design is meant to guide, frame and otherwise motivate then we can agree manipulation is the end product. Now, that can be good or bad. But honest? Good design doesn’t always tell the whole truth, it tells the truth that a designer – and often a client – wants to tell.

Steven Heller wrote on Rams’ sixth principle, Good design is honest. Mr Heller is a notable author, writer for Print Magazine and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Emory Allen created the above illustration based on Mr Heller’s essay. Mr Allen works under the studio name Ocular Invasion. He currently works for the motion graphics and animation studio Make.

This is entry five 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.

In describing the principle Good design is unobtrusive, Dieter Rams wrote that good designs should “be both neutral and restrained, leaving room for the user’s self-expression.” In other words, a good design allows its users to focus fully on and gain maximum benefit from using it without noticing how it has been constructed. Good design has a specificity of purpose with a built-in freedom of interpretation.