Canonical · Design & Engineering · Manifesto

Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design

Dieter Rams · 1976

"Rams, Braun's chief designer, reduced good design to ten checks — innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough, environmentally friendly, and as little design as possible — and applied them for decades to beat fashion cycles."

The idea

In the 1970s Rams watched Braun's catalog swell with trendy radios and wrote a checklist on a single sheet: if a product fails any of ten principles, it is not good design.

Why it works

The takeaway — recall it first

Form Follows Function

"A structure's shape should be dictated by what it needs to do, not by decorative tradition — form is a consequence of function, not a separate choice."

Louis Sullivan · EssayContinue→