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.
Dieter RamsRead
Design should not dominate things, should not dominate people. It should help people. That's its role.
Interpretation
Design should enhance and assist human experience rather than overwhelm it.
This quote by Dieter Rams emphasizes the role of design as a supportive tool for individuals rather than a controlling force. It suggests that good design should prioritize the needs and experiences of people, facilitating their interactions with objects and environments without becoming an intrusive or dominating aspect of their lives.
In practice
In a presentation about user-centered design principles.
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.
My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.
You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.
Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
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.
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.
The role of designers and product makers is to really become much better editors. What kind of functionality is actually needed - and truly delightful - to consumers? Remove all the extraneous stuff.
Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential.
Designers provide ways into—and out of—the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. (...) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.
Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They’re able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand.
We won't do something different for different's sake. Designers cave in to marketing, to the corporate agenda, which is sort of, 'Oh, it looks like the last one; can't we make it look different?' Well no, there's no reason to.
Design needs to be plugged into human behavior. Design dissolves in behavior.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.