ENGLISH SUMMARY (which became Vitsoe after the departure of Zapf in 1969). The Braun brothers stimulated the idea of Rams to get involved in furniture design, for they saw it as an opportunity to educate cus tomer’s taste and prepare the ground for a new and brave Braun style. Vitsoe still sells 606 Universal Shelving System, thoroughly working out personal proposals for each customer, based on his individual preferences.
Ten principles of good design
needed new solutions, and the talent of the young Rams was exactly what they were looking for in that interesting and intense period. The harmony between the Braun brothers and Dieter Rams was based on similarity of their philosophies, where respect for a human being stood central. In those years the best German minds were working on re vival of their nation after the infamous and de structive Second World War. Braun embodied the new development of the German society, which was both humane and progressive. The company cared about its employees, offering them a health center and quality food in the canteen. This fa vorable conditions were perfect to form the fu ture phenomenon of Dieter Rams. Not later than in 1956 the first daring product by Rams and Gugelot saw the light: the SK4 phonograph with a shocking metallic cover which replaced the usual wooden kitsch and, as Rams put it, «carpets on the speakers». SK4 got even a nickname «The Snow White Coffin» thanks to the novelty which later became a commonly accepted standard: the transparent plexiglass lid, through which one could see the turning LP. After that new experi ments followed, which considerably improved the quality of sound due to application of new materi als and shapes. It was the time when a special la conic and monochrome aesthetics started, fol lowed for decades by numerous designers. It was Dieter Rams who invented modular audio systems with separated loudspeakers and the ancestor of the Walkman, a compact portable record player TP1 (1959). Of course, in those distant years the public was not enough educated in design to com pletely appreciate the progressiveness of Rams. In fact he deserves a special mentioning as the de signer who played an important role in forming of a good taste in his society, especially after he be came the head of design at Braun in 1961.
Vitsoe At the end of the fifties an interesting meeting found place in the life of Dieter Rams. He was in troduced by the designer Otto Zapf to Niels Vitsoe, who was selling Danish furniture in Germany. An idea to produce resistant modern furniture resulted in one of the most famous proj ects by Dieter Rams, 606 Universal Shelving System. It became a design classic, and for its pro duction a new company Vitsoe+Zapf was found
It would be presumptuous for many modern de signers to claim the knowledge of «good design» absolute parameters. But the authority and the professional experience of Dieter Rams allowed him to formulate the ten principles, which he ad vises to follow for achieving a certain quality. He states that a good design is innovative, aesthetic, unobtrusive, honest and long lasting. That good design makes a product understandable and use ful, is thorough down to the last detail and envi ronmentally friendly. And finally that good de sign is as little design as possible. Naturally, Rams has both adherents and ideolog ical opponents. But it’s rather tough to be his fol lower, for it demands serious efforts and knowl edge. Jonathan Ive considers himself a creative successor of Dieter Rams, and in fact his develop ments for Apple strikingly resemble objects by Rams. The German designer generously rejects any provocative suppositions about plagiarism and thinks that Ive has merely recognized his working principles. Besides, Rams repeatedly mentioned that Apple represents the best example of a contemporary company that knows how to work with designers. In May, 2012, Dieter Rams turned 80. He can be definitely called a happy man, for even in such an honorable age he remains actively involved in pro fessional life. But there is also a tragic part in it: it’s been almost 40 years ago that Rams warned about the consequences that a thoughtless design can have for our world. Sadly, the words he said back in 1976 in his little bit utopian and rather ar dent speech have not lost their actuality today: «... I imagine our current situation will cause fu ture generations to shudder at the thoughtless ness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities and our landscape with a chaos of as sorted junk. What a fatalistic apathy we have to wards the effect of such things. What atrocities we have to tolerate. Yet we are only half aware of them». «… let us look at the wider environment: the world we live in. There is an increasing and irre versible shortage of natural resources: raw mate rials, energy, food, and land. This must compel us to rationalise, especially in design. The times of thoughtless design, which can only flourish in times of thoughtless production for thoughtless consumption, are over. We cannot afford any more thoughtlessness».
Dieter Rams Dieter Rams was born in 1932 in Germany. He start ed to study architecture at Wiesbaden School of Art in 1947, but after one year interrupted the course to complete a carpentry apprenticeship. Graduated in
1953 with honors and worked in the studio of Otto Appel and later at Skidmore Owings & Merrill. In 1955 году Dieter Rams started to work for Braun and was the head of design at the company from 1962 till 1995. From 1959 Rams projected furniture for Vitsoe. His most famous product, 606 Universal Shelving System, was remade in 1980 s in alu minum by De Padova. From 1981 till 1997 Dieter Rams was teaching industrial design at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg and from 1987 till 1997 he was leading the German Design Council. Now he is the only honorable member of the Council. Among numerous awards and prizes which Dieter Rams received during his career, is the hon orary doctorate award from the Royal College of Arts, London and the prestigious Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany for his life’s work. Several large museums have hold his personal exhi bition «Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams». page 90 Material by Olga Zhuravliova Photos by Pasquale Formisano, Archivio Storico Barilla, Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Edwin Co. Ltd., Fondazione Pirelli, Galleria Campari, Salvatore Gregorietti, Roberto Pieracini, Ettore Sottsass Jr
TDM5: Twentieth Century Book Till February 2013 Triennale Design Museum hosts a giant book with colorful pages. It tells us a story about the Italian graphic design of the Novecento. TDM5 is the fifth exhibition of the museum’s spe cial series, dedicated to the Italian design, its spe cific features and perspectives. The first four edi tions were about the product design and its ten dencies, but this time Triennale Design Museum has concentrated its attention entirely on the graphic design. According to the museum direc tor Silvana Annichiarico «...it’s the first time that we leave the territory of objects and things to advance into the domain of words,...signs and im ages». Special value of the exhibition is added by the fact that it’s the first attempt to look into the Italian graphic design heritage, to single it out as an autonomous phenomenon and to liberate it from the label of a auxiliary form of art.
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