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Re: Design and Designers
Besides enjoying this video, it also made think about how design seems mostly about simplification and finding the essence or core. The best design seems to bring no attention to itself as we the users are given something we feel a strong connection with and our appreciation grows as we perceive its intrinsic beauty easily because it was designed that way.
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Re: Design and Designers
A reminder to watch this video while it’s still available free for a couple of more days. Thanks for mentioning him, Jakob. He is so important. The film makes it clear how and why his “Less, but better” axiom has been so influential in the best designs. He’s always resisted the bells and whistles and stuck to his vision. The whole world, not just designers, can learn a lot from him. Excellent stuff.
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Re: Design and Designers
zero wrote #322585:
Dieter Rams … He is so important. The film makes it clear how and why his “Less, but better” axiom has been so influential in the best designs. He’s always resisted the bells and whistles and stuck to his vision. The whole world, not just designers, can learn a lot from him. Excellent stuff.
That was the one film of the bunch I hadn’t seen before and I watched it a couple of days ago too. I thought it was good in that it focussed on the person and his ethos more than on the reductive style, which has since become iconic, first through Braun, then through its influence on / similarities with the design of apple products.
The interview with Naoto Fukasawa (a key figure behind Muji) was lovely where he says Rams nailed “the recipe” years ago while handling an object (a radio) that looks a bit like a 50-year old iPod and remarks “there’s nothing more to add, and nothing more to take away”. I also enjoyed the exhibition at Vitra near the end where he’s encouraged to comment on other work and then proceeds to disparage chairs and furniture by Ron Arad, Frank Gehry and Ettore Sottsass. They run entirely contrary to his credo of rational purpose – a very German trait – so while he’s “right” in that sense, he misses (or chooses to miss) their point.*
The stringency which he brings to his own life, and his idea of living, is perhaps admirable in its own way but people are rarely as “colourless” in everyday life. There were parts in the interviews, like his enjoyment of a piece of jazz that hinted at an appreciation of playfulness one didn’t see much elsewhere. I came away with an ambivalent sense of admiration but also of coldness. However, the “Less, but better” axiom I could subscribe too and would be nice in many aspects of modern life.
*An aside: Vitra is an interesting place to visit (not just for designers) because it collects together so many different ideas about living and being (in the broader sense) in one place, dispelling the idea that one is better than the other. Of course, some you like more than others and there’s as much to admire as there is to ‘revile’. The last time I stopped there (it’s a long way away from me at the very south-west tip of Germany just where it meets Switzerland and France) I remember being extremely sceptical about their new Vitrahaus by the star architects Herzog & de Meuron, which resembles a series of loaf-like extruded bars with an iconic-house-shaped cross-section stacked in an artful sculptural Christmas-tree like structure. From the press articles and online pics I thought it looked a bit “naff”, like a cheap idea blown up to jumbo size to achieve maximum effect. In a way it is just that, but the experience of visiting it was surprisingly thrilling and suddenly revealed much more depth than I expected. Far from being the ‘one-trick pony’ I had assumed, it is very carefully calibrated to its very disparate surroundings and acts as an effective container for showcasing the different ‘worlds’ of Vitra products and for showcasing their collection. Each view out of the cut-off ends of the ‘loaves’ frames a different vignette (vineyard, car park, industry, roadway…) and forms a different backdrop, and each half of a ‘loaf’ is a different ‘world’ of products/living environment, while you descend from top to bottom down the middle, with a few twists on the way for added variation. I saw then that the building is very much ‘of its place’ in more ways than one. For me it was a good reminder that seeing and experiencing in person often shows you more than what you see virtually (which applies not just to architecture…).
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Re: Design and Designers
It was the man and how the world and the people he met shaped his philosophy (which then expressed itself in his design) that impressed me. After the war, there was a need to be “economical” with design, there wasn’t room for excess or fancy or unnecessary. The aims of Braun for “modern” household appliances fitted perfectly with his philosophy of “less but better”. He rejected car manufacture because they were an example of wanting change for the sake of it, whereas he only wanted to change things if it would improve them. When Gillette took over Braun, they too wanted “different” rather than “better” so he left.
He realised the production process he was part of often added to pollution and environmental damage. There is now an an even greater need for “less but better” with ethically-sourced sustainable materials becoming essential. Unfortunately, Apple has used “less but better” for the look and feel of their products but are also using “more but better” with their upgrade after upgrade that is stripping the planet of rare earth and caters for people’s wants rather than their needs.
The Vitrahaus you refer to Jakob looks intriguing, perhaps designed like that so we must go and investigate its strange appearance? Otherwise it would would always be noise?
I also like how DR spoke of designing from inside out and that designing from the outside is usually an imposition. I don’t remember the word “organic” being used in the film but I think it would apply well to his philosophy and approach. Clean simple lines that work well but are unobtrusive and don’t shout, I think, will always grow on people.
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