
Good design: The ten commandments of Dieter Rams - JoelSutherland
http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/gooddesign
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aston
Here's a piece of trivia: The original iPhone calculator was designed to mimic
Ram's designs (as seen part way down the linked page).

compare:

[http://www.designmuseum.org/__entry/4799?style=design_image_...](http://www.designmuseum.org/__entry/4799?style=design_image_popup)

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/667023357/>

~~~
richcollins
Also see:

[http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-
secr...](http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-
apples-future)

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wallflower
I recommend this website from Bill Moggridge (IDEO). It's based on a book +
DVD but they provide a chapter (of the week) for download and the interviews.

<http://www.designinginteractions.com/>

This week: Chapter 4 – Adopting Technology
<http://www.designinginteractions.com/download>

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jackchristopher
Viewing good design, I get the same shiver that I do when I see a beautiful
woman.

Those calculators are devastating.

~~~
unalone
"Devastating?" Why would you say that in particular? They look superbly
logical but dated to me. I'm more instantly attracted to the speakers and
radio, for instance.

I'm guessing you've got more design experience than I do, so care to explain
what it is you see when you look at those calculators? I'd love to know.

~~~
jackchristopher
I use "devastate" in a few forms to talk about the effect an attractive woman
has on me. With that remark, I generalized the usage towards the calculators,
and the beautiful things on the rest of the page helped bring the word out of
me too. The whole site (I agree those speakers are great) was beautiful.

I have no design experience, unless you get metaphorical with the word. This
just lit my aesthetic taste buds.

But I wish I could know what I _really_ mean with "beautiful". Viewing the
calculators, I noticed it felt similar to looking at a beautiful woman; _that_
was novel. I never felt that about a calculator, so I noted it.

And after this experience, I won't squint my eyes at mathematicians when the
call equations "beautiful" again.

This is a great question, aesthetic preferences seem odd. This one just hit
the right buttons with me.

~~~
unalone
Fair enough.

Today I came across Dieter Rams's shelf design and it had a similar effect on
me. If you're interested: <http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/606/how-it-works>

~~~
jackchristopher
That's great.

I've never heard of Dieter Rams before this thread; I'm not hip to the design
world. But some designs do raise my pulse while I looking from the sidelines.
Henry Dreyfuss' Western Electric Model 302 phone [1] is a good example.

That phone has the nostalgia effect; that's good in design. Design should be
nostalgic, in the sense that it should recall things that you're familiar with
and feel comfortable around.

It's useful to look at design as communication. Your trying to same something
with the right metaphors. But in this case, it's with three dimensional
metaphors instead of words.

[1] <http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/we/we302.html>

