“A record player, a kitchen appliance, a slide projector or a shaver with disorderly, chaotic, confusing or overloaded design cannot fulfil its functions. The harmony of a design too, its aesthetic quality, also has a functional purpose—it facilitates a positive emotional relationship between a device and its user.”
Dieter Rams
Less but better (Primary source)
Less but Better isn’t a comprehensive catalog of Dieter Rams’ work or a complete history of Braun. Instead, it’s something more valuable: a deep dive into the thinking behind some of the twentieth century’s most enduring product designs.
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“Less, but better.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“I once said that my aim is to leave out everything superfluous in order to allow the essential to come through.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“Colour was always used extremely sparingly [in Braun hi-fi appliances] and then only to provide information.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“My aim was to design [door] handles that were as simple as possible. Our living environment today is complex and polymorphic enough. I have always striven to couteract this chaos.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt Primary source“Beauty is the quality which makes to endure.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source