Dieter Rams Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Good design means as little design as possible.

Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.

People react positively when things are clear and understandable.

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.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail - Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Question everything generally thought to be obvious.

As designers we have a great responsibility. I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

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

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

Good design is honest.

My worry is that the world is becoming more chaotic every day. My excitement is that more people paying attention to 'Less but better' could help solve our growing problems.

Nothing works without details. They are everything, the baseline of quality

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

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

Good design makes a product understandable.

Design is a thinking process that starts in the head and with sketches. Thinking cannot be done by a computer.

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

The design should make the product speak to you.

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

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

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

As designers we have a great responsibility.

I hate everything that is driven by fashion.

Good design is as little 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.

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