*디터람스: 좋은 디자인이란 무엇인가? Good Design is Unobtrusive

몇달전 외국 한 디자이너의 전시회가 성황리에 국내에서 마쳤다.
그는 1955년부터 브라운에 입사하여 1997년까지 은퇴하는 47년동안
브라운의 디자인실을 이끌며 전 세계의 가전제품의 디자인 표준을
만드는 장본이였다.
'제품 디자인은 언제나 중립적이여서 눈에 띠지 말아야 하고 제품을
기능을 최대한 발휘 할 수 있는 유효성이 높은 디자인어야 한다'라는
모토를 가지고 나치에 대가 끝겼던 바우하우스의 모더니즘 디자인을
이어주는 중요한 구심점 역활을 하였다.
이와 같은 그의 디자인 경향은 1956년 발표한 오디오 sk4에서 기존의 화려한
장식으로 덮여 있던 황금색의 오디오를 심플한 형태의 어쩌면 심심하기만
새로운 형태로 만들어 내는 새로운 패러다임을 만들기 시작하는데
이것은 기존 장식에 대한 탈피고 새로운 혁신이였다.
기존 음향전문가들에게 비난을 받았던 이 제품은 곧 대중적인 환영받고
전세계 음향기기들의 표준이 된다.
그러부터 시작된 그의 일련의 작업들은 가전제품의 표준을 만들어 나가며
제품디자인이 갖어야 하는 원칙들을 만들어 나간다.
그의 유명한 10가지의 원칙은

good design is innovative
굿 디자인은 혁신적이다
good design makes a product useful
굿 디자인은 제품을 유용하게 만든다
good design is aesthetic
굿 디자인은 예술적이다
good desgin makes a product understandable
굿 디자인은 제품 사용에 이해가 쉽다
good design is honest
굿 디자인은 정직하다
good design is unobtrusive
굿 디자인은 불필요한 설명을 하지 않아도 된다
good design is long-lasting
굿 디자인은 오랜시간동안 사랑받는다
good design is thorough down to the last detail
굿 디자인은 마지막까지 디테일 철저하다
good design is environmentally friendly
굿 디자인은 친환경적이다
good design is as little desing as possible
굿 디자인은 최소한의 디자인을 하는 것이다

이 원칙들 속에 새롭게 쓰여진 그의 디자인은 '브라운'의 이름으로
세계를 알려진다. 어쩌면 브랜드의 그늘 속에 숨겨져 자신의 철학처럼
이름을 알리기보다 제품을 알린 그야 말로 진정한 디자이너가 아닐까 싶다.
진정성이란 언제가는 그 빛을 발하는 듯이 애플의 디자인의 모티브가 되어
또다시 새로운 디자인 아이콘이 되고 있다.

이 모든 역사속에 있는 사람이 바로 독일이 나은 세계적인 산업디자이너
'디터람스'이다.

reviewed by SJ


Dieter Rams is not comfortable with fame.  He might be a superstar designer, but if the raised German tones I heard when this was suggested are an indication of his feelings towards this title, he would not want to be remembered in that way. Sitting in a bar on the top floor of a hotel in Osaka three years ago, at the opening of his seminal exhibition 'Less and More', Rams was deep in conversation about this very subject proclaiming that he was not a star designer, or at very least did not wish to be.

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Rams is not 'in it' for fame or money, nor does he wants the world to buy his latest designs but simply use the products that he and the design team at Braun during his tenure worked tirelessly to create.  Their work may have landed onto the pages of design books and magazines and even sit alongside images of iPhone calculators to suggest an influence on the designers of today, the intention was to change the way we view 'design' as a subject.

Many long, smoke-filled nights were spent with Artur and Erwin Braun in post-War Germany working to reinvent an electronics company that had not made the impact that the brothers Braun wanted to achieve.  They wanted to bring the chaotic order of jazz to the world of design, that is, to challenge what we 'need' and focus entirely on how to make this work effortlessly.

His work is often referred to as 'no design' which can be taken as a compliment for someone who sees the term 'design' as having fallen in to disrepute opting for the qualified title of architect in recent times.  He refers to his 606 Universal Shelving System for Vitsœ as behaving like a 'good English butler': always available, but never intrusive.  Applying the term of 'no design' in this context is testament to his work of unobtrusive design.

Dieter Rams may have just celebrated his 79th birthday but he is still as passionate as ever about design and architecture as he was when starting out at German manufacturer Braun back in 1955 at the age of 23.  Sitting in his house, designed by himself, on the outskirts of Frankfurt he reflects on his career and with no children of his own he hopes to help other, young designers take his principles of design and create products that enhance our lives and add to the ever-changing story of good, simple, honest design.

Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design helps us to understand a product
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is consequent to the last detail
Good design is concerned with the environment
Good design is as little design as possible

Referencing AEG designer Peter Behrens as the 'grandfather of design', Rams knows exactly where his influences come from.  He understands that to design timeless products needs a restraint that does not exist in most of us.  We want to add, and add, until we no longer see anything anymore.  It is much more difficult to take away from the design than to add to it; Mark Twain famously wrote "If I had more time I would write a shorter letter" and I am in danger myself of over-thinking this modernist designer's theories, but these lessons are indeed what Dieter Rams has spent the past 79 years striving to achieve and to pass on to would-be designers.

Having designed his own home, from the bespoke white tiles with dark grey grouting, made for the Vitsœ showroom in Frankfurt at the same time to match perfectly to the dimensions of his 50-year-old shelving system to fixtures for his tools in the downstairs workshop‚ a room that saw many secret product development when it was even too secretive to be worked on at the Braun factory, Rams is a perfectionist to a degree that most of us would not even comprehend.  Only a few items have made it in to his home that have not been under the microscopic view of his eye before heading to mass-production.

Rams sits quietly every morning in his garden resting on the, less-successful of his designs, 740 stacking system (which can be a table or seating for the outside) he prunes his Bonsai trees to equally Germanic perfection that he gives to everything he does in his life, these trees are another sign of a designer who never stops considering challenges.  He has been influenced heavily by Japan throughout his life, and this shows across his modernist home that he shares with his photographer-wife Ingeborg Kracht-Rams.

The majority of the furniture was made by Vitsœ in Frankfurt during the 1960s and much of it still being added to as their needs change throughout their lives.  This thinking has been carried through to everything in the house with their photography studio now an archive for their joint catalogue of work.  The sculpture in the hallway was presented to Rams during the 1970s by a student who had taken his furniture collection for Vitsœ and created an object combining parts of this which has graced the walls of his home since that day reflecting how his work has even influenced artists, more famously the British artist Richard Hamilton who had replaced the head of his electric toothbrush with dentures.

Having been in the limelight for the biggest part of his career, Rams cannot retire from his fame despite the fact that he hasn't been at the helm of Braun design for more than 15 years now, and in order to celebrate his incredible life and body of work, the publisher Phaidon released a monograph  entitled 'As little design as possible', written by design writer Sophie Lovell who spent a vast amount of time getting to know Dieter Rams before setting out to document his life and career.  With photography unearthed from the Dieter Rams archive and acquired from the recent exhibitions, this book marks a full stop at the end of the sentence, even if Rams continues to travel the world influencing designers year-after-year.

from  yatzer