Dieter Rams Quotes

#1. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.

Dieter Rams

#2. Things which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different.

Dieter Rams

#3. Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour.

Dieter Rams

#4. You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.

Dieter Rams

#5. My heart belongs to the details. I actually always found them to be more important than the big picture. Nothing works without details. They are everything, the baseline of quality.

Dieter Rams

#6. An honest design communicates solely the functions and values it offers. It does not attempt to manipulate buyers and users with promises it cannot keep.

Dieter Rams

#7. One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.

Dieter Rams

#8. People react positively when things are clear and understandable.

Dieter Rams

#9. I like to be in New York. Le Corbusier described it in the 1930s as a 'wonderful catastrophe.' It is still a wonderful catastrophe, but inspiring.

Dieter Rams

#10. Not the spectacular things are the important things - the unspectacular things are the important things, especially in the future.

Dieter Rams

#11. I don't like computers. I still like to do my drawings by hand.

Dieter Rams

#12. Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

Dieter Rams

#13. Good design means as little design as possible.

Dieter Rams

#14. I am not an early bird. I go to bed normally between midnight and 1 o'clock, so it is understandable that I cannot be an early bird. I wake up around 9 o'clock.

Dieter Rams

#15. Good design makes a product understandable.

Dieter Rams

#16. Quiet is better than loud.

Dieter Rams

#17. We designers, we don't work in a vacuum. We need business people. We are not the fine artists we are often confused with.

Dieter Rams

#18. Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

Dieter Rams

#19. The design should make the product speak to you.

Dieter Rams

#20. I hate everything that is driven by fashion.

Dieter Rams

#21. Good design is long-lasting! It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated ...

Dieter Rams

#22. I sit, I think, I make some drawings. As a designer, you cannot retire totally.

Dieter Rams

#23. Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.

Dieter Rams

#24. All too much of the man-made is ugly, inefficient, depressing chaos.

Dieter Rams

#25. Good design is honest.

Dieter Rams

#26. Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design

Dieter Rams

#27. Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better - because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Dieter Rams

#28. I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

Dieter Rams

#29. There is a lot of bad architecture. What we need more is to look at how our landscape should look in the next decades.

Dieter Rams

#30. Products have to be designed in a way that they are comprehensible.

Dieter Rams

#31. As designers, we have a great responsibility.

Dieter Rams

#32. My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.

Dieter Rams

#33. A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Dieter Rams

#34. Less, but better.

Dieter Rams