Hasta La Ideas

Phaidon’s new monograph on Dieter Rams, As Little Design as Possible follows on the heels of 2009’s Less and More and the observations we made there on the man’s life remain true. Indeed, just as both titles try to translate his design ethos “weniger, aber besser,” into English (“less, but better”), both monographs attempt to distill a man’s life and work into photographs while also making it clear that this is a man who wants his work to speak for itself.

Consequently, the resultant words and careful photography (e.g. clean product shots with neutral gray backgrounds, super close details, and long shots with context like human hands or objects on shelves) leave it such that most of the pages in each book could be traded with one another without much aesthetic compromise. The major difference, however, is that As Little Design as Possible also has some very nice photos of a few ugly spaces. While Less and More ended with the 2009 exhibit of his work in the Suntory Museum in Osaka Japan, As Little Design as Possible began there. Sophie Lovell was offered unprecedented access to his archives, his home and his process.

As Little Design as Possible has some pictures of some pretty cluttered workspaces. Tools, boxes, saws, bins stuffed with rolled paper, chairs cracked and delaminated, a classic Braun sign showing signs of rust, and even a box of Suntory Whiskey in the background (apropos), but on the page directly opposite the whiskey, below a black and white photo of a jazz era dancer and in front of his classic SK 4 phonograph (AKA “Snow White’s Coffin), a set of tools lies, so neatly and meticulously laid out that they communicate on an emotional level in a way that perhaps even his product never could—this is a man who cares about the details.

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