Dieter Rams' ten principles for good design are quoted so often that they have become wallpaper, pinned above desks and pasted into pitch decks by people who have never read past the headline. That is a shame, because the principles are not a style guide for minimalism. They are a set of questions, written by a man who suspected he was part of the problem. In the late 1970s, according to Vitsœ, the furniture company that has produced his designs for more than six decades, he grew worried about "an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises" and asked himself whether his own work was good design. The ten principles were his answer.
Rams, born in 1932, is most closely associated with Braun, Vitsœ and the functionalist school of industrial design. Here is each principle, what it actually means, and the Rams product that best shows it, with the examples Vitsœ itself pairs with each one.
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1. Good design is innovative
Rams argued that the possibilities for innovation are never exhausted, but that innovative design always develops alongside innovative technology and can never be an end in itself. Novelty for its own sake does not count. Vitsœ pairs this principle with the TP 1 radio and phono combination of 1959, a portable record player and radio built long before personal stereos were commonplace.
2. Good design makes a product useful
A product is bought to be used, and it must satisfy functional, psychological and aesthetic criteria. The designer's job is to emphasize usefulness and strip away anything that detracts from it. The example is the MPZ 21 citrus juicer of 1972, designed by Rams and Jürgen Greubel for Braun.
3. Good design is aesthetic
This is the principle people forget. Rams never said beauty was irrelevant. He said the aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness, because objects we use every day affect our well-being, and that only well-executed objects can be beautiful. The RT 20 tischsuper radio of 1961 is Vitsœ's example.
4. Good design makes a product understandable
Good design clarifies a product's structure and, at best, makes it self-explanatory. The T 1000 world receiver of 1963 shows the idea: a complex shortwave radio whose controls are laid out so clearly that the interface teaches itself. Rams' first landmark, the SK4 radio-phonograph with Hans Gugelot, made the same point by putting the mechanism under clear acrylic, as Unknowndivide explored in Dieter Rams: Braun SK4.
5. Good design is unobtrusive
Products that fulfill a purpose are tools, not decorative objects or works of art, so their design should be neutral and restrained to leave room for the user's self-expression. The Cylindric T 2 lighter of 1968 is the illustration. This is the principle most often misread as "make everything gray". It is really about humility: the product should serve the person, not perform for them.
6. Good design is honest
Good design does not make a product appear more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is, and it does not manipulate the buyer with promises it cannot keep. The example is Braun's L 450 flat loudspeaker, TG 60 reel-to-reel tape recorder and TS 45 control unit from 1962 to 1964. Today the principle reads like a rebuke to engagement-driven software. Light's Light Phone III, a phone that openly refuses to keep you scrolling, is a rare modern example.
7. Good design is long-lasting
Good design avoids being fashionable and so never looks antiquated, lasting many years even in a throwaway society. The proof is the 620 Chair Programme, designed for Vitsœ in 1962 and still sold today. The modern version of this principle is repairability, which is why products like the Framework Laptop 13 Pro feel so Ramsian.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance, because care and accuracy in the design process show respect for the user. Tellingly, Vitsœ's example is not by Rams at all, but the ET 66 calculator of 1987 by his Braun colleague Dietrich Lubs. The principles were meant to describe a culture, not a signature.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
Design should conserve resources and minimize physical and visual pollution throughout a product's life. Rams wrote this decades before sustainability became a marketing line, and the 606 Universal Shelving System of 1960, a modular system you can add to, reconfigure and take with you when you move, still embodies it.
10. Good design is as little design as possible
The final principle gives Rams his motto: less, but better. Concentrate on the essential aspects and do not burden products with non-essentials. Vitsœ illustrates it with the L 2 speaker of 1958. Note the second half of the phrase. "Less" is easy; "better" is the hard part, and it is what separates Rams from the flood of empty minimalism that borrowed his look.
Where the principles live today
Small product studios carry the ideas better than most big brands. Studio Neat, the two-person company behind the Glif and the Mark One pen, is a good example, as Unknowndivide covered in Studio Neat.
For the full story, the definitive reading is Rams' own Less But Better, and Sophie Lovell's Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible surveys the work in depth. Vitsœ publishes the principles in full on its site, and Gary Hustwit's documentary Rams shows the man behind them at work.
Read them as questions rather than rules. Rams did.
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