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Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait. This is not a listicle. This is the earnest design philosophy of

Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait. This is not a listicle. This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time. A philosophy which can be found in most tech products today (Apple has literally ripped off many of his designs). If you create software or hardware products, ignore these at your own peril. HN users, perennially frustrated by superior technological solutions losing out to simpler sexier ones, could learn a thing from #3: Good design is aesthetic.

pmoriarty 6y ago
"Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait." Yet the article is still exactly that and no more: low content clickbait. "This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time" I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes.
- eitland 6y ago
  > I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes. Yes, AFAIK he was primarily influential because of his work, only later because of his writing.
- rswail 6y ago
  Can I politely suggest that you research someone before you make critiques like this. Dieter Rams is one of the leading industrial designers of the world. His role in industrial design, particularly for consumer technology at Braun, is renown. It wasn't "clickbait", this was an article on the website of the furniture company that has delivered his furniture designs since the 1960s. But if you so freely dismiss that sometimes distilling design into understandable and actionable principles is actually a complicated and difficult task, you might want to consider that Euclid only had 5 axioms and 5 postulates [1]. From that, the entire Euclidean geometry and mathematics was derived. But I guess even ancient Greece had clickbait listicles. [1] https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    Comparing this pablum to Euclid? You can't be serious!
EL_Loco 6y ago
Indeed many Apple products from the Ive era show a lot of resemblance to some of Rams' stuff.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design came long before Buzzfeed and the concept of clickbait." Yet the article is still exactly that and no more: low content clickbait. "This is the earnest design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time" I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes.

eitland 6y ago
> I hope he was influential for more than just those 10 trite platitudes. Yes, AFAIK he was primarily influential because of his work, only later because of his writing.
rswail 6y ago
Can I politely suggest that you research someone before you make critiques like this. Dieter Rams is one of the leading industrial designers of the world. His role in industrial design, particularly for consumer technology at Braun, is renown. It wasn't "clickbait", this was an article on the website of the furniture company that has delivered his furniture designs since the 1960s. But if you so freely dismiss that sometimes distilling design into understandable and actionable principles is actually a complicated and difficult task, you might want to consider that Euclid only had 5 axioms and 5 postulates [1]. From that, the entire Euclidean geometry and mathematics was derived. But I guess even ancient Greece had clickbait listicles. [1] https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Comparing this pablum to Euclid? You can't be serious!

EL_Loco 6y ago

Indeed many Apple products from the Ive era show a lot of resemblance to some of Rams' stuff.