One of my favorite designers –
Influential designer Dieter Rams has been an instrumental factor in a number of projects and brands over the years – having been a driving force behind Braun Electronics as well as his immense impact on Apple’s Jony Ive. It’s perhaps his lesser known work with smaller company Vitsœ – the British manufacturer that has been producing Rams’s modular shelving system for 50 years – where his greatest work stemmed from. To mark his 80th birthday, Vitsœ has released the transcript from Rams’s speech delivered in New York in 1976, in which he articulates his ethos of user-centered creations and some of his famous 10 commandments of design. Choice excerpts from the speech appear below while the entire oration can be read at Vitsœ.
Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder because, in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.
Dieter Rams, recognised as one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century, will celebrate his 80th birthday on 20 May. To mark the occasion, Rams has invited Vitsœ to release the transcript of his speech, ‘Design by Vitsœ’, which he gave in December 1976 in New York City; it provides an insight into a design ethos that was remarkably ahead of its time.
Rams’s frank and prescient speech asserts his commitment to responsible design and awareness of an “increasing and irreversible shortage of natural resources”. Believing that good design can only come from an understanding of people, Rams asks designers – indeed all of us – to take more responsibility for the state of the world around us: “I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk.”
Dieter Rams delivered this speech 36 years ago; it was not until 1983 – seven years later – that the UN would establish the Brundtland Commission to address the deterioration of the human environment and natural resources. Through intelligent and forward-thinking design, epitomised by the 606 Universal Shelving System, Rams’s ethos was already making its way around the world, one home at a time.
