Products need only last as long as a glimpse at Instagram, so what does good design mean now? For Dieter Rams, it has always been about purity, ever since he started his industrial design career during the mid-1950s. Rams, who recently turned 86, served as the Chief Design Officer of Braun from 1961 until 1995; his famed “Ten Principals of Good Design,” and its influence on everyday objects, especially technology and electronics, remains unparalleled. An upcoming auction at Wright in Chicago (July 12th) celebrates the German’s prolific career and continued legacy, sending more than 130 of seminal products by Rams’ and his Braun colleagues across the block.
Nearly everything in this collection, sourced from Los Angeles connoisseur-and-dealer JF Chen, is fascinating. Here, Watch Journal narrows the scoping, picking out a few favorite lots to illustrate Rams’s “Ten Principals.”
Dieter Rams: The JF Chen Collection, Chicago, July 12, 2018; wright20.com
Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible
