Dieter Rams: 10 Principles of Good Design

What makes good design good? This is a very well-debated question in the field of design, and we can probably pick up the reasons in a design when something has been designed poorly but there have been multiple attempts to figure out an objective way to evaluate a design and check if something has been well designed or not. In the 1970s a German Industrial Designer and former Architect named Dieter Rams who is also considered one of the greatest living designers on the planet came up with 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design, this enables designers to assess if their design is up to the mark or not. In this article, we will discuss the 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design by Dieter Rams.

Dieter Rams: 10 Principles of Good Design

Who is Dieter Rams?

This was the 1970s when a German Industrial Designer and former Architect named Dieter Rams came up with 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design. Dieter Rams was worried about the design industry around him which back then looked like, as he quotes – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colors, and noises”. This was the reason why he began to question if his own work was positively contributing to design and he asked himself a very simple question – “Is my design good? This is where the 10 Principles of good design were created by Dieter Rams.

The 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design

1. Good design is innovative:

• A good design is differentiated from a poor design by the factor of innovation. Innovation is coming up with a new feature or a distinct way of solving issues faced during the design process. Innovation in the interface or user experience makes your design differentiate from million other designs out there.

2. Good design Makes a product useful:

• There is on point of having eye grabbing interface if the functionalities of the product and the design are not good enough. The interface brings you visitors while a good design must have core features that makes the product useful and the visitors come back to the website.

3. Good design Is aesthetic:

• Like we said, The interface brings you visitors while a good design must have core features that makes the product useful and the visitors come back to the website. Aesthetics are as important as the usability since it brings you new visitors. The aesthetics are as important as the usability of the product.

4. Good design Makes a product understandable:

• In terms of design, it is called accessibility. To make your product accessible to a larger set of audience, your design must be simple enough to be easily understood for a larger set of audience. For a design to be a good design, it must follow the accessibility bets practices.

5. Good design Is unobtrusive:

• The statement “Good design is unobtrusive” means that it does not try hard to attract attention for no reasons, it must be “to the point”. Here the product you design must fulfill a purpose, it should not just be something to decorate and present and should be of use for the visitors.

6. Good design Is honest:

• A Good design does not try to oversell itself and make fool out of the visitors, a designer must design keeping in mind the users are smart enough to sense whenever there is something fishy in the design. A Good design can be differentiated from a poor one by analyzing whether it is making false promises and manipulating the user or not.

7. Good design Is long-lasting:

• A Good design does not rely on following trends or tries to be fashionable, good designs are created as a longer term solution to a user issue. Good design is long lasting, it does not die fast.

8. Good design Is thorough down to the last detail:

• Good design is detailed, it ensures that the visitors don’t have to waste their time and energy finding out little piece of information about the product. A good design conveys the information accurately to the users making sure all their common doubts are resolved.

9. Good design Is environmentally friendly:

• A Good design is sustainable. Designing any physical or digital product must be done keeping in mind its long term sustainability. A good design consists of long term solutions for the core design issues or for designing new features for the product while ensuring that the product produces as less harm to environment as possible and as much environmental friendly as it can be.

10. Good design Involves as little design as possible:

• One of the most underrated principle for good design is minimalism. A good design or minimalist design does not unnecessarily increase cognitive load on the user’s mind. A good design enables the user to focus on what’s important and not burden them by cluttering information on the screen.

Conclusion

We can easy relate that there is a strong co0relation between Dieter Rams 10 Principles of good design and minimalism, in fact many designers argue that Dieter Rams was a minimalist and firmly believed that less design is better design. Focusing solely on these commandments, will ensure your design is professional an effective. These Commandments can also be used to test a design subjectively, while different designs may have different criteria, for testing its efficiency these core Commandments remains same for all. Make sure to follow the 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design we discussed in this article in order to come up with a better product design.