Desktop speakers for phones and other mobile devices have become a wondrously rich area for design innovation in the last few years. The Korean firm Cloud and Co offers a warm, minimal take on the ideas with crystaline cylinders inspired by Muji and Fukaswa, Bauhaus and Braun. [ cloudandco ] [ elevenplus ]
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A new audio brand has arrived emphasizing cool, efficient design. NanoHiFi continues the tradition of Braun and Tivoli with crisp boxy shapes. Its special appeal is easy compatibility with sound sources via USB and Bluetooth—and striking quality. The sound and design engineers are Dwidjaja Setiabudi and Setiawan Yusran, who are based in Jakarta. For now, sales are mostly online. [ nanohifi ]
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about phil patton
“My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.”
Dieter Rams, 1980
Dieter Rams, head of Braun and its prominent designer for forty years, believed that exceptional design is simple design, both visually appealing and functionally sound, relieved of any non-essentials. “As Little Design As Possible” by Sophie Lovell brilliantly shares the relevance of his work in today’s design climate in this beautifully illustrated, eight hundred-page paperback.
The book includes interviews with influential industrial designers, such as Naoto Fukasawa, Sam Hecht and Jasper Morrison, who speak to the cultural significance of his design and its timeless quality. Thorough and hypnotizing with well-written texts in both English and German, “As Little As Possible” also illustrates never-before-seen prototypes of unrealized products and engineering models that reveal his design process.
Few designers have been as prolific yet as modest as Rams. Back to purity, back to simplicity: our lives improve when we embrace as little design as possible.
Overview
>A comprehensive monograph on highly influential product designer Dieter Rams (b.1932). As head of design at Braun from 1961 to 1995, Rams created some of the most iconic objects of the twentieth century
>A detailed text covering Rams’ life, the intellectual context in which he worked, his designs for Braun and Vitsoe, and the ideas and lectures he developed as an advocate for good design
>Includes a foreword by Jonathan Ive, head of design at Apple Inc.
>Sketches and photographs of finished products and prototypes provide insight into Rams’ design process; diverse archival material and photographs give a complete picture of his life and work
>Includes newly-commissioned photographs of Dieter Rams’s house and the Braun archive: a never-before-seen glimpse of the world’s most complete collection of Rams’s designs
good design is as little design as possible
Dieter Rams (born May 20, 1932 in Wiesbaden) is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of industrial design.
In 1993 I asked Dieter to speak to the Architecture & Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago. The society recently had a name change: “design” had been added. We joked ( ahem ) at the time that the real estate economy was so bad that the Architecture Society needed new members. We needed a credible and passionate design icon to speak to this group. Dieter became the first designer to speak under the society’s new name.
What I remember that night and again recently while watching the Objectified movie was Dieter’s 10 design principles. Honestly, I can’t tell you for sure that these are the same principles. Hoping Dieter will set the story straight.
I think I like the earlier stuff better. Maybe it was the materials or maybe it was so different than the pack at the time. The first Braun product I remember making a design connect to me was an electric razor. Much of Dieter’s work has long seemed more connected to brutalism than minimalism. Let’s say beautifully, brutally, minimal.
* Good 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
resources:
vitsoe
designmuseum
gizmodo
victoria and albert museum
dieter rams flickr
braun flickr
37 signals
tendesignprinciples
new: a bit late
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