Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design helps us to understand a product.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is durable.
8. Good design is consequent to the last detail.
9. Good design is concerned with the environment.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

When you look pictures hosted on Gizmodo you can see that Jonathan Ive is heavily influenced by Rams’ designs.

We now have to see what other household products Apple will reinvent.

I’d have to add that

• Good design affords usability
• Good design reduces confusion
• Good design sees no need to conceal
• Good design reinforces clarity of purpose
• Good design has no need to shout
• Good design shapes focus naturally

I’m no design guru but I think there’s room for improvement.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Commentary, Cool, infurious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.