Hasta La Ideas

Anyone who thinks that minimalist or clean product design begins and ends with Jonathan Ive would be well served to check out the latest exhibit on Dieter Rams. Unfortunately, the exhibit in question was already held at the Suntory Museum in Osaka, Japan … but the contents of the retrospective have also been catalogued in a book, Less and More available in limited numbers through the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Rather than working for Braun, Rams was Braun, since of the 1,272 products designed during his stay, “Rams, or teams in which Rams was a member, designed 514 of them.” During that time, they crafted the design language for everything from stereo amplifiers to electric shavers, and much of that language remains applicable today.

While the book’s title Less and More nearly demands to be mistyped as Less is More, Rams himself explained his design approach as “Weniger, aber besser,” which translates roughly to “Less, but Better,” but the book remains indicative of its title. Consisting of nearly 800 pages (more), it has a nearly flimsy cover (less), that comes in a box (more) wrapped in a plastic wrapper (much more). The book itself demanded to be treated delicately and the process of reading it felt more reverent than functional. That, however, is our only complaint. The interior of the book alternates between thick pages with juicy product shots and dense essays written in Japanese and English on diaphanous paper. The essays do a nice job of describing the circumstances by which the young Rams wound up working at Braun a scant two years before Braun’s products made a splash at the 11th Milan Triennial and wound up the MoMA’s permanent collection shortly thereafter, but as befits any designer, the pictures of his products tell the story just as clearly.

(more…)