RGE Design

23/01/2025

Dieter Rams: Principles of Good Design

Good design is as little design as possible.

Dieter Rams is famous for saying less is better, but what does he actually mean?

We often find that products have been so overdesigned that they either no longer perform their desired function or do so poorly. There is a incessant temptation to add everything into a product, to make it a solution to everything, adding more and more features and add-ons which we often don’t realise may be taking away from the product. The designers and engineers get caught up in designing everything into a product they lose sight of the original intention for the product.

I am of the opinion that I’d rather I have multiple products which serve their purpose as fully as possible than one product that does it all but does it poorly. I think this is what Dieter Rams is getting at when he says less is better.

In his tenth principle of good design he states “good design is as little design as possible”. A product should sell itself “because it concentrates on the essential aspects,” and is “not burdened with non-essentials” allowing for it to be appreciated fully for the things it does rather than the things it doesn’t. Simplicity in design is a good thing, it doesn’t make design easier but it does make it less convoluted for both the designer and the user. When things are overdesigned they often end up being more complicated to use and become less intuitive.

Simplicity isn’t easy to do. As a society we always want more and as designer we always want to push for better designs, for products to do more and to use the most recent technologies. But, what we should be challenging and pushing for is the elegance which come with simplicity.