A moment of clarity

19 November, 2009

London’s Design Museum pulled a huge crowd last night for a preview of its latest exhibition, Less is More: the Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, which opens to the public today (18 November).

Except for Rams himself, now in his late seventies, and Sir Terence Conran, a huge fan of his work, much of the exhibition’s eager attendees were too young to have had much first hand experience of Rams’ record players and radios. But the practical obsolescence of these products only seems to highlight the clarity and efficiency of their design: they would still be as pleasing and intuitively easy to use today.

This exhibition gives us some of Rams’ greatest hits, most of them designed for German electronics manufacturer Braun and furniture company Vitsœ, products which made his reputation as one of the 20th century’s most influential industrial designers. Alongside these, huge monochrome wall graphics representing carefully placed dials and buttons emphasise the ultimate clarity, efficiency and beauty of his designs.

For Rams, there was no distinction between an object’s form and its function: if an object we use every day is not attractive, he says, it will be unpleasant to use and so fails in its function.

The ‘design ethos’ referred to by the exhibition’s title is based on Rams’ 10 principles of good design [Please click the link on right hand side], which are as relevant today as when they were first written. They are also frequently flouted by effusive and semi disposable products.

Rams’ products were free from the cryptic symbols that overcomplicate many of today’s TV remotes, DVD players and mobile phones. Instead, he realised that good design should speak to us in our language, not the other way around.

Less is More: the Design Ethos of Dieter Rams is at the Design Museum in London until 07 March 2010.