From 013b1994e46919c6d1633b047ae9550147b55483 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Carla Barquest Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:10:39 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] fix up typos --- drams.md | 24 ++++++++++++------------ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) diff --git a/drams.md b/drams.md index a0d32f6..a52d7bf 100644 --- a/drams.md +++ b/drams.md @@ -7,10 +7,10 @@ Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the o Simplicity, of course, is not the absence of complexity. Just removing clutter would result in uncomplicated but meaningless products. Rams's genius lies in understanding and giving form to the very essence of an object's being -- almost describing its reason for existence... [p14] -When you think of Braun, you immediately think of the products, not some abstract mission statement of charter. Our perception of these products is our perception of the brand. [p14] +When you think of Braun, you immediately think of the products, not some abstract mission statement or charter. Our perception of these products is our perception of the brand. [p14] In Darmstadt in 1954, Erwin attended a speech by the designer and former Bauhaus teacher Wilhelm Wagenfeld that was to have a significant impact on the design direction of his company. It was a speech that challenged the accepted role of the manufacturer and outlined a holistic approach of a different kind: one in which the quality of products was bound to the attitudes and actions of their creators, as well as being the natural outcome of a function-oriented process involving many individuals working in different disciplines within the framework of one company. '[Better products] need intelligent producers who should thoroughly think through every product in terms of its purpose, its utility and longevity, and then consider how to fabricate what is required and right, with the minimum production and cost outlays, and bring it to the market,' Wagenfeld said. 'Industry and the market often understand creative input to be a decorative attachment, a kind of fashion design according to the latest patterns ... The result is that the displays in the shop windows of our cities are overflowing with unchanged, meaningless junk ... the wares have got louder, brasher, more intricate, but not better. In order to sell, people want to be "up to date". The desire is understandable ... when we consider that our industrial production is largely dependant on specialists, from manufacturers and managers who may know how to produce and sell, but can only judge the quality of their products in terms of how much profit they make.' -He argued that factories manufacturing consumer goods make a vital contribution to determining the quality and userfulness of products. This quality is located inside the objects, and results from both visible and invisible work. Wagenfeld ended his speech by saying that the simpler an industrial product, the harder it is to make, because simplicity comes from a degree of self-assuredness on the part of the designer. A 'simple' industrial product has a clarity that is free from the desires and constraints of each of its creators. He said: 'An industrial product that arises out of my activity thus only meets my own standards if a great distance causes it to seem almost unknown to me. It has to exist for itself, have its own being, completely purged from the individual influences that let it come into being. It should embody the company's achievment as a whole, the joint searching and discovering.' [p25-6] +He argued that factories manufacturing consumer goods make a vital contribution to determining the quality and userfulness of products. This quality is located inside the objects, and results from both visible and invisible work. Wagenfeld ended his speech by saying that the simpler an industrial product, the harder it is to make, because simplicity comes from a degree of self-assuredness on the part of the designer. A 'simple' industrial product has a clarity that is free from the desires and constraints of each of its creators. He said: 'An industrial product that arises out of my activity thus only meets my own standards if a great distance causes it to seem almost unknown to me. It has to exist for itself, have its own being, completely purged from the individual influences that let it come into being. It should embody the company's achievement as a whole, the joint searching and discovering.' [p25-6] Wagenfeld was in effect advocating an objective design-driven approach to manufacturing, whereby the purpose of design should not be to increase profit, but to serve the consumer. The kind of practice he was talking about should not be autocratic: too much ego on the part of the creator can only have a negative effect on the end result, since the product will reflect the whims of the maker more than the purpose. H[e] reject[ed] ... fashion and decoration and ... suggest[ed] that integrity of form, utility and thus quality could only be achieved if the will and participation of an entire company was bent towards it... [p26] @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ It takes a considerable degree of doggedness and conviction to follow the ungrat In 1957 a young physics student called Otto Zapf (b. 1931) was looking for ways in which to improve his father's modestly sized furniture-making business in Eschborn (near Frankfurt). ... Rams recalls that Zapf turned up with a portfolio of furniture designs by the architect Rolf Schmidt under his arm, opened it up and asked Rams what he thought. Rams said that, first of all, the prototype photographs were of poor quality and offered to come around and reshoot them with Marlene Schnelle, a good friend of his and Braun's in-house photographer at the time. [p187] -Much to his surprise, when Dieter Rams went to his boss Erwin Braun in 1957 and asked for permission to design furniture for Zapf in addition to his work at Braun, the response was immediate and positive. 'It was not usual in those days when you were employed by a company to work externally for someone else as well,' recalls Rams, 'but Erwin Braun thought it was a good idea. I can still hear his words: "LetRams make furniture, it will be good for our radios".' But there was considerable resistance to the idea within the company from colleagues and technicians. 'He [Erwin] was the only one to think outside the box and see that it could only be an advantage. Without his support I would never have been able to do it,' says Rams. Erwin was already a firm believer in an integrated approach to modern life and design. Perhpas he also understood that allowing his valuable young designer this 'hobby' outside of the company would help to keep him at Braun in the long term. [p188] +Much to his surprise, when Dieter Rams went to his boss Erwin Braun in 1957 and asked for permission to design furniture for Zapf in addition to his work at Braun, the response was immediate and positive. 'It was not usual in those days when you were employed by a company to work externally for someone else as well,' recalls Rams, 'but Erwin Braun thought it was a good idea. I can still hear his words: "Let Rams make furniture, it will be good for our radios".' But there was considerable resistance to the idea within the company from colleagues and technicians. 'He [Erwin] was the only one to think outside the box and see that it could only be an advantage. Without his support I would never have been able to do it,' says Rams. Erwin was already a firm believer in an integrated approach to modern life and design. Perhpas he also understood that allowing his valuable young designer this 'hobby' outside of the company would help to keep him at Braun in the long term. [p188] '[Vitsoe's] company policy is to allow more people to live better with less that lasts longer,' says Adams. 'Around 50 per cent of our customers are existing customers who are adding to, installing or rearranging their furniture, which might have been bought as far back as 1960.' This is a valuable lesson in sustainable design that carries increasing resonance, more than half a century after Rams first started designing his 'less but better' furniture. [p218] @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ Computers did not feature significantly in the design process for much of this t The influence that the design team wielded in the company was clearly understood from all sides. The team believed in themselves, their abilities, their methods and their products and Gillette wanted this successful format to continue. The products continued to sell, and the design team continued to hold sway. Or as Lubs puts it: 'we convinced them and they made an effort to understand'. [p236] The rejection of colour as decoration and an antipathy to what he calls the 'abuse of colour' is something that Rams has always felt strongly about. Colour, in his opinion, 'has to fit the product: Some products, like things you put on a table are colour-capable, but tools and appliances--kitchen appliances--should not be coloured, they should stay in the background ... you have to think very carefully about where colour is important and where it can be dangerous'. This is not to say that he rejected colour _per se_; in fact he took it very seriously as a means of communication: 'using colour as a signal, I find, is often better than colouring the whole product'. When not compelled to do otherwise, the Braun design team's use of colour in products was reduced to highly specific areas such as control switches. Restricting the use of colour to small points on an otherwise neutral object concentrates its effect, which is shifted away from decoration and towards function, especially when each colour is assigned a signal role such as green for 'on / off' switches, red for 'fm' and yellow for 'phono' on hi-fis or yellow for the second hand on clocks and watches. -This colour coding of operating details is a primary example of the self-explanatory nature of Braun products. One of Dieter Rams's principles of good design is that design should make a product easy to understand: 'I have always laid emphasis on the fact that a product can be brought to "speack" through good design. My aim has always been to raise the self-explanatory aspect. I never trusted instruction manuals -- we all know that most people don't read them. The information always came through how the product looked -- with the colour-coding / labelling. Red is demanding, green is more restrained and so on.' [p238-9] +This colour coding of operating details is a primary example of the self-explanatory nature of Braun products. One of Dieter Rams's principles of good design is that design should make a product easy to understand: 'I have always laid emphasis on the fact that a product can be brought to "speak" through good design. My aim has always been to raise the self-explanatory aspect. I never trusted instruction manuals -- we all know that most people don't read them. The information always came through how the product looked -- with the colour-coding / labelling. Red is demanding, green is more restrained and so on.' [p238-9] It is important to note that a manufacturing firm where design and the design department form a powerful component--a design-driven company--was, and still is, a highly unusual entity. As such, it was necessary for the design department at Braun, which was effectively led by Rams from 1961 right up until his promotion to the board as member responsible for Corporate Identity Affairs in 1995, to continually justify and maintain its position in the company. This was especially the case after the US company Gillette became the major shareholder in 1967. Therefore the establishment of rational and defendable thinking positions was indispensable for Braun's design department. [p341] @@ -43,9 +43,9 @@ It is important to note that a manufacturing firm where design and the design de 1 The first question is not if one should be designing something but how. 2 Is the product that we are designing really necessary? Are there not already other, similar, tried and tested appliances that people have got used to and are good and functional? Is innovation in this instance really necessary? 3 Will it really enrich people's lives or does it just appeal to their covetousness, possessiveness or ideas of status? Or does it wake desire because it is offering something new? -4 Is it conceived for the short- or long-term, does it just help increase the spped of the cycle of throwaway goods or does it help slow it down? +4 Is it conceived for the short- or long-term, does it just help increase the speed of the cycle of throwaway goods or does it help slow it down? 5 Can it be simply repaired or does it rely on an expensive customer service facility? Can it in fact be repaired at all or is the whole appliance rendered redundant when just one part of it breaks? -6 Does it exhibit fashionable and therefore aesthetically short=lived design elements? +6 Does it exhibit fashionable and therefore aesthetically short-lived design elements? 7 Does it help people or incapacitate them? Does it make them more free or more dependent? 8 Is it so accomplished and perfect that it perhaps incapacitates or humiliates you? 9 Which previous human activity does it replace and can that really be called progress? @@ -61,10 +61,10 @@ Being a product designer, insists Rams, has nothing to do with being an 'artist' This rather strict view of a designer's work is not the whole definition, however; a designer must also take notice of cultural and social values and developments in society, as well as thinking of individual users, and integrate them into their designs. 'The designer who wants to develop a function-appropriate product must think/feel himself into the role of the user... the designer is the user's advocate within the company.' says Rams. Thus he or she needs to be rational but sensitive and empathic at the same time. As if that was not enough, a designer in a manufacturing company must also understand everyone else's position and needs (especially the customer's) and communicate with them all through the products he or she designs. This means that an industrial designer is perhaps above all a commuinicator, someone who is fluent in a variety of expressive languages, ranging from words, modelling, drawing and technical specifications to the ergonomics of form. [p344] -'Design cannot just be about speculative leering towards better sales opportunities,' says Rams. 'It is a far more comprehensive task that can only be realized through a candidly and confidently implemented overall concept. Once a firm has sit itself this goal, it affects the entire enterprise, its standpoint and its objectives'. The safest way to make new products is to look at the market, see what sells well and make something similar. This 'me too' approach is conservative and market-driven. it does not encourage innovation nor user-orientated design. -However, coming up with new designs that are outside of the established system is a rist. It is also time-consuming and expensive to research and develop good products. The commitment in the company needs to be across the board. 'The decision to try to generate good design must therefore be a company-wide decision,' says Rams. 'That means it cannot be the design department that imposes it and who are made ultimately responsible. It has to be an integral part of the fundamental objectives of the company and finally it must be underpinned by a specific oranisation and decision-making structure.' It is the role of the company to give their designers the space within to make good design, he adds, and it is the role of the designers to come up with designs and then repeatedly defend them. [p345] +'Design cannot just be about speculative leering towards better sales opportunities,' says Rams. 'It is a far more comprehensive task that can only be realized through a candidly and confidently implemented overall concept. Once a firm has set itself this goal, it affects the entire enterprise, its standpoint and its objectives'. The safest way to make new products is to look at the market, see what sells well and make something similar. This 'me too' approach is conservative and market-driven. it does not encourage innovation nor user-orientated design. +However, coming up with new designs that are outside of the established system is a risk. It is also time-consuming and expensive to research and develop good products. The commitment in the company needs to be across the board. 'The decision to try to generate good design must therefore be a company-wide decision,' says Rams. 'That means it cannot be the design department that imposes it and who are made ultimately responsible. It has to be an integral part of the fundamental objectives of the company and finally it must be underpinned by a specific organisation and decision-making structure.' It is the role of the company to give their designers the space within to make good design, he adds, and it is the role of the designers to come up with designs and then repeatedly defend them. [p345] -This need to defend design innovations and decisions, combined with the complexity of considerations involved in developing new products, encouraged Rams, the Braun design team and the communication department to outline an in-house order system or set of guidlines for good design -- what Rams called the 'grammar' of Braun design. These guidelines proveded the backbone of the design-driven brand identity by outlining two related design strategies: suggesting how the company's products could belong to a characteristic family and aiding company members to stay in touch with priorities as products were developed. 'Good design is not only a part, but to an ever-increasing degree the nucleus of what is today considered to be "corporate identity", and this is ultimately expressed by the products themselves which are offered to the public,' says Rams. This constantly evolving set of guidelines, which covered innovation, quality, utility, aesthetics, modesty, honesty, comprehensibility, consistency, ecology and longevity, was also the inspiration for Rams's ten principles for good design developed in the 1970s and 1980s. [p346] +This need to defend design innovations and decisions, combined with the complexity of considerations involved in developing new products, encouraged Rams, the Braun design team and the communication department to outline an in-house order system or set of guidelines for good design -- what Rams called the 'grammar' of Braun design. These guidelines provided the backbone of the design-driven brand identity by outlining two related design strategies: suggesting how the company's products could belong to a characteristic family and aiding company members to stay in touch with priorities as products were developed. 'Good design is not only a part, but to an ever-increasing degree the nucleus of what is today considered to be "corporate identity", and this is ultimately expressed by the products themselves which are offered to the public,' says Rams. This constantly evolving set of guidelines, which covered innovation, quality, utility, aesthetics, modesty, honesty, comprehensibility, consistency, ecology and longevity, was also the inspiration for Rams's ten principles for good design developed in the 1970s and 1980s. [p346] Rams is often reluctant to talk about aesthetics, not least because of the subjectivity of the issue ('beauty is in the eye of the beholder') and just about everyone, qualified or otherwise, has an opinion on the subject. For him the design of an industrial product is 'aesthetic if it is honest, balanced, simple, careful and unobtrusively neutral'. In other words, the aesthetic appearance of a product does and should not play a primary role: 'design is not merely and certainly not exclusively there to feast the eye like a work of art or to be decorative'. For an object to be beautiful, says Rams, it must also do its job properly. When products are well -- that means usefully -- designed, they have a kind of beauty that is inextricably related to their function, 'like a tool or the exterior of an aeroplane'. Thus the aesthetic beauty of an industrial product is bound to its utility. [p346-7] @@ -84,16 +84,16 @@ At talks in 1983 and 1984 he summarized various speeches with six pared-down pri 1. Good design is innovative 2. Good design renders utility to a product 3. Good design is aesthetic design -4. Good design makdes a product easy to understand +4. Good design makes a product easy to understand 5. Good design is unobtrusive 6. Good design is honest. -The principles had grown to ten by the time he gave a lecture during the 1985 ICSID Congress in Washington and with slight variations in wording have remained in that format ever since. In German they tend to go under the heading: 'Zehn Thesen zum Design' (Ten Theses on Design) but somewhere along the line a rather grandiloquent translator seems to have come up with the phrase: 'Ten Commandments of Good Design', which is not Dieter Rams's style at all -- they are not intended to be set in stone, pompous, inflexible and intransigent -- so here we shall stick to the term 'Principles'. He introduced the principles of good design as follows: 'Some fundamental reflections on the -- all things considered -- essence of design which determined me and my fellow designers was summed up in ten simple statemets a few years ago. The are helpful a means for orientation and understanding. They are not binding. Good design is in a constant state of redevelopment -- just like technology and culture.' [p353] +The principles had grown to ten by the time he gave a lecture during the 1985 ICSID Congress in Washington and with slight variations in wording have remained in that format ever since. In German they tend to go under the heading: 'Zehn Thesen zum Design' (Ten Theses on Design) but somewhere along the line a rather grandiloquent translator seems to have come up with the phrase: 'Ten Commandments of Good Design', which is not Dieter Rams's style at all -- they are not intended to be set in stone, pompous, inflexible and intransigent -- so here we shall stick to the term 'Principles'. He introduced the principles of good design as follows: 'Some fundamental reflections on the -- all things considered -- essence of design which determined me and my fellow designers was summed up in ten simple statements a few years ago. They are helpful a means for orientation and understanding. They are not binding. Good design is in a constant state of redevelopment -- just like technology and culture.' [p353] 1. Good design is innovative > The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology and can never be an end in itelf. 2. Good design makes a product useful -> A product is bough to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it. +> A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it. 3. Good design is aesthetic > The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful. 4. Good design makes a product understandable -- 2.26.2