DESIGN
TODO: reorganize into a more usable structure.
Dieter Rams 10 principles
1. Good design is innovative
Design always come about in connection with innovative technology. How can design be good if the tehcnology is not on the same level?
2. Good design makes a product useful
Good design optimizes usefulness and ignores anything that doesn’t serve the purpose or works against it.
3. Good design is aesthetic
Objects you use daily significantly shape your personal surroundings and your sense of well being. Only something that is well-made is beautiful
4. Good design makes a product understandable
It makes it easy to understand the structure of a product. Even more, it can make the product “talk”. Ideally, it explains itself best.
5. Good design is unobtrusive
Products that serve a purpose have the characteristics of a tool. Their design should be neutral and leave room for the user’s self-expression
6. Good design is honest
Honest means not trying to make a product look more innovative, powerful, or more valuable than it really is.
7. Good design is long-lasting
In contrast to fashionable design, it lasts many years even in our current throwaway society.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Nothing should be arbitrary or left to chance. Thoroughness and precision are expression of respect for the user.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
Design makes an inportant contribution to preserving the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to simplicity. Back to purity. Less, but better.
Other thoughts
Avoiding mediocrity
Dieter Rams, in response to the question I would like to know what is needed so that i, as an industrial designer, can overcome mediocrity?"
You have to find the right people. People who could actually achieve something through collaboration, who think beyond what they are responsible for on a daily basis. Who think “what will our society look like in the future?”
Fashion
Attributed to Oscar Wilde by biographer Richard Ellman:
When autumn came, Wilde started his lecturing again. The subjects he offered were ‘The Value of Art in Modern Life,’ a recasting of what he had been saying in America and after, and a new lecture on ‘Dress.’ In this he commended a recent revival of the sense of beauty in England, and only regretted that so far it had not extended to what people wore. To promote radical change he urged that children be taught drawing before they were taught their letters, to imbue them with a sense of the contours of the body. The child would learn that the waist was a beautiful and delicate curve, and not, as the milliner placed it, an abrupt right angle suddenly occurring in the middle of the body. The enemy of proper dress was fashion. ‘A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.’ French influence was pernicious, and had been so since the time when William the Conqueror landed to find that the English were wearing a dress at once beautiful and simple, and promptly changed it. In the second quarter of the seventeenth century, English dress had again been delightful, and Charles II chose that moment to reimport French fashions.
Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday things
What is MUJI?
from their website, see references
MUJI, originally founded in Japan in 1980, offers a wide variety of good quality products including household goods, apparel and food. Mujirushi Ryohin, MUJI in Japanese, translates as “no-brand quality goods.”
MUJI is based on three core principles, which remain unchanged to this day:
- Selection of materials
- Streamlining of processes
- Simplification of packaging
MUJI’s products, born from an extremely rational manufacturing process, are succinct, but they are not in the minimalist style. That is, they are like empty vessels. Simplicity and emptiness yield the ultimate universality, embracing the feelings and thoughts of all people.
MUJI was founded in 1980. Its origin was a thorough rationalization of the manufacturing process with an eye to creating simple, low-cost, good quality products. Specifically, we reexamined products through three lenses: material selection, inspection process and simplification of packaging. For instance, if you omit the bleaching process for pulp, the resulting paper is light beige in color. MUJI used this paper for its packaging and labels. The ensuing products are remarkably pure and fresh. In notable contrast to the prevailing over-embellished products in the marketplace, MUJI’s products both won great appreciation and sent shock waves not only through Japan but across the entire world.
This is because we do not make objects to entice responses of strong affinity, like, “This is what I really want” or, “I must have this.” MUJI’s goal is to give customers a rational satisfaction, expressed not with, “This is what I really want” but with “This will do.” “This is what I really want” expresses both faint egoism and discord, while “This will do” expresses conciliatory reasoning. In fact, it may even incorporate resignation and a little dissatisfaction. MUJI’s goal is to sweep away that slight dissatisfaction, and raise the level of the response, “This will do” to one filled with clarity and confidence.
MUJI’s products, born from an extremely rational manufacturing process, are succinct, but they are not in the minimalist style. That is, they are like empty vessels. Simplicity and emptiness yield the ultimate universality, embracing the feelings and thoughts of all people. We have been credited with being “resource-saving”, “low-priced”, “simple”, “anonymous” and “nature-oriented”. Without placing a disproportionate emphasis on any one of these varied assessments, MUJI aims to live up to all.
There are more than 1,000 MUJI stores around the world, carrying more than 7,000 items ranging from clothing and household goods to food and even houses. But the foundation of our ideology hasn’t changed since the day we were conceived; like the compass that points due North, we continue to orient ourselves to the basis and universality of daily life.