Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams (born May 20, 1932 in Wiesbaden) is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and Vitsoe. Rams studied architecture at the Werkkunstschule Wiesbaden as well as learning carpentry from 1943 to 1957. After working for the architect Otto Apel between 1953 and 1955 he joined the electronic devices manufacturer Braun where he became chief of design in 1961, a position he kept until 1995. Rams once explained his design approach in the phrase "Weniger, aber besser" which freely translates as "Less, but better." As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, DIETER RAMS (1932-) emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.

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.

These ten principles defined Dieter Rams’ approach to “good design”. Each of the hundreds of products he developed during forty years with Braun, was unerringly elegant and supremely versatile. Units were made in modular sizes to be stacked vertically or horizontally. Buttons, switches and dials were reduced to a minimum and arranged in an orderly manner. Rams even devised a system of colour coding for Braun’s products, which were made in white and grey. The only splash of colour was the switches and dials.

Rams and his staff designed many memorable products for Braun including the famous SK-4 record player and the high-quality 'D'-series (D45, D46) of 35 mm film slide projectors. He is also known for designing the 606 Universal Shelving System by Vitsœ in 1960. Many of his designs — coffee makers, calculators, radios, audio/visual equipment, consumer appliances and office products—have found a permanent home at many museums over the world, including MoMA in New York. For nearly 30 years Dieter Rams served as head of design for Braun A.G. until his retirement in 1998. He continues to be a legend in design circles and most recently designed a cover for Wallpaper magazine. It is obvious that Rams' designs have been influential on Jonathan Ive of Apple, Inc., designer of such products as the iMac, iPod, and iPhone, as can be witnessed particularly in the iPhone's calculator application, whose design is based on the Braun ET66 calculator designed by Rams.

Vorticism

The Vorticists were a group of London artists that decided to work closely together in 1914 to better promote the avant-garde style that they had formulated. The label "Vortisim" was coined by Ezra Pound in early 1914, and the group were together in London until August 1914, which is when the First World War broke out.

Blast was the groups' manifesto. It was edited by Wyndham Lewis and was produced as a large "Puce Monster" that had 'BLAST' printed diagonally on the outside. Inside, amongst many articles and illustrations of their art, was a series of pages where the group either 'blasted' or 'blessed' people and institutions. It was an idea copied from the Futurist group who was also trying to make a name for itself using similar methods at this time in London and Italy. Blast was an enormous hit in Britain, and the publicity that the Vorticist group required was suddenly attained.

The Vorticists created a new aesthetique virtually overnight (let us remember they only existed as a group for six months) and their industrious output caused their art to be seen in many places. Meanwhile they declared war on the Futurists, were involved in supporting women in their fight for universal suffrage, and were busy developing new ideas in sculpture.

The curiosity of newspaper editors and the public in general made Vorticist painters the first 20th century British Art celebrities. They were loathed and loved by the public much like a modern day Turner Prize winner. For a few months, the idea of abstract art painted by a half-crazed bohemian prophet gripped the imagination of the public. Newspapers had cartoons with artists in them; they were reported in the popular press more often than ever before, and the ideas behind art started being considered by ever greater numbers than ever before.

That other big activity of 1914, War, effectively killed the Vorticist movement. Although Vorticism had its own exhibitions in wartime, in 1915 in London (and another in New York in 1917) these were almost formalities. After the War, Vorticism struggled, and it seems now that a general embarrassment of its prewar exuberance led to its exponents to abandon the hard sell of Vorticism, and more unfortunately, some of its artistic achievements.

However, almost ten decades later, we can begin to see how much Vorticism achieved in its few months' existence. It was an important, internationally known art movement, which laid the foundations of Modernist Art.

Vorticism produced the first British abstracts.

Vorticism was the first multi-media art movement in Britain, using pictorial art, sculpture and the printed word.

Vorticist artists saw themselves as revolutionary educationalists as much as artists, teaching the public a new graphic language that spoke of the Modern Age. - REF 

Manifesto - Blast

Note there were two original BLAST productions. These were BLAST (retrospectively known as BLAST 1)- published June 1914, and BLAST 2 published in 1915. There has been a modern production dubbed 'BLAST 3' and there is a fourth BLAST planned for 2011. Where no particular BLAST number is specified, the writer alludes to BLAST 1.

BLAST was the Vorticists' own periodical and manifesto. It was first published in June 1914.

The journal's editor was Wyndham Lewis, the de facto leader of the Vorticists. Subtitled a 'Review of the Great English Vortex', it literally reviewed the state of art at this moment in Great Britain, and what was required to reinvigorate it after the years of Victorian neglect.

Its physical appearance was startling. It was a magazine, but unlike any other magazine printed before. The format was a softback of a monstrous size - 12 by 9.5 inches (30.5 by 24cm). The cover was thick puce card, and there was just one word printed diagonally front and back: BLAST. 

The name of the publication, 'Blast' is a derogatory exclamation, and is used repeatedly in the first and most important section of the publication, Manifesto I. Within this section, the Vorticists 'blast' many institutions, objects and people who need to be overcome before their vision of a new Vorticist Britain can come about. There is a (smaller) 'Bless' section which is a list the positive forces that favour their programme. What is unusual and completely unprecedented (at least in the English language) is the typographical layout of the pages. The words are sized in a selection of point sizes depending on the force of the rhetoric. Point sizes vary from 36pt (1/2 inch, 13mm) to lesser sizes of 24pt and 18pt, and these size changes can occur several times in one line of text. This kind of typographical formating had only been used in advertising before this time, and never in the confines of an art periodical. It was in this sense a revolutionary moment.

Apart from advertising, there had been similar typographical experiments by the Futurists, for example in Marinetti's Italian printing of his poem, 'Zang Tumb Tumb' from 1912. This utilised the concept of 'Parole in Liberta' or 'words in liberty'. This allowed words to float across the page in freedom from the conventional rows of printed matter.

The Manifesto was signed by Aldington, Arbuthnot, Atkinson, Gaudier Brzeska, Dismorr, Hamilton, Pound, Roberts, Sanders, Wadsworth and Lewis.

There is no doubt that Blast in general, and Manifesto I in particular owed some of its style and content to the Futurists. The important point is that Lewis was able to organise its wording, finance its printing, and secure its sponsorship by some of the most important avant garde artists of the day.

Design Inspiration #4

We have designed an identity for Ákos Maurer Klimes an award-winning hungarian product designer and design strategist.

Identity Concept

While creating the identity, we regularly talked with Ákos next to a cup of coffee. On one of the first occasions he counted how many people he had contacted and worked with on various projects. This strategic attitude, the linkage between two points, between people, was our very first source of inspiration. This little momentum had an impact on our work during the whole design process.

Visual Language

The visual language we created is based on Ákos’s sketches. We studied his sketchbook and extracted our ideas for the identity’s elements from his drafts. Lines, oblique hatches and simple drawings are the fundamentals of the final identity.

Super Normal

Ákos named Naoto Fukasawa’s and Jasper Morrison's Super Normal, as important and influencing design philosophy in his latest works. He wanted it to be a leading principle for us to simplify the visual language, to exile the colors.

Personalization

The philosophical objective of the identity was to be a very personal and interactive system, to be just like a nice and polite gesture, a friendly handshake.

To reach this goal, our main tool was to create much more personal elements than ever before. The business card for example has many different versions similar to the relations between the designer and his client or fellow designer. What is more, Ákos can write the name of the one who recieves the card, thus creating a more personal and direct relationship.

Sketchbook

Website

Actionscript developer: András Polgár

visit the website

The design of strategic thinking, contrary to product design, can not be told with the help of pictures and spectacular videos, but this is an important guideline in Ákos’s works, so we tried to make this as significant as possible. The solution is an interactive game which is available on the website. The user, whether he/she is a client or a fellow designer, can set up the equation from the specified components, and recieves a text message, Ákos’s answer as a result.

Pictograms

Dronninga

Dronninga landskap is one of Norways leading landscape architects. To tell the story of craftsmanship and tradition, we made a labyrinth of the letter D, which became the most important element of the new identity. The classical labyrinth is a universal symbol for landscape arcitechts and can be traced back to medieval times. For them it represents a way of thinking and catalyst for how they attack their projects. 

As in nature, the feeling of touch and perspective, became an important feature in the new identity.

Tactile uncoated papers, wide range of embossing, screenprinting, varnishes and

all routed elements in their signage. 

ORIGAMI

Visual identity / Sebastian Burgold