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DIETER RAMS | 6. 3. 2008

Excerpt from Prof. Rams' lecture on March 6th 2008 in Ljubljana

WENIGER ABER BESSER
LESS BUT BETTER

I am absolutely convinced that there is an ethics where design is concerned. I take design too seriously to accept the cynical motto that tells us everything is right, everything is somehow good, and everything is allowed.

Making changes that affect the future has never been easy, and it is considerably more difficult to do today.

As a matter of fact, anyone who looks in on our world from the outside and sees what we have done to it must find themselves baffled by humanity and the environment we have created. Here, design has a profound social responsibility. It is not just about the individual, about how well a person lives with products. What is far more important is that the community be able to survive with the things it produces.

In terms of the change required, we can apply the maxim “less but better”. I have made this the guiding principle, so to speak, of my thoughts and actions. “Less but better” sounds something like the famous old dictum “less is more”. It may sound similar, but it means something different. We have to drastically reduce the quantity of our products in the long term. At the same time, we have to drastically improve their quality. This means fewer products all of the same kind, differing only formally on the surface. Fewer designer artworks. Fewer trendy, seasonal items that seem to be in touch with the Zeitgeist but are out of fashion a few months after they appear.

“Less but better” means moving away from the product culture of excess, waste and cheapness, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word.

Designers can, and indeed must, become the foremost proponents of a new product culture that gradually reduces the pollution and destruction of our natural environment. I am referring not only to actual physical destruction, but also the pressure that is brought to bear on the way we perceive, think and feel about things by the chaos of the ugly, aggressive forms and colours into which vast domains of our living environment have been transformed by designers of every ilk. It is a long road to this new product culture. And it will be a road of countless small steps. For this reason, any and all approaches, even ones that seem minimal, deserve consideration and respect.

—
Dieter Rams is an industrial designer who has had a profound influence on the design of home appliances around the world. One of the key figures in German functionalist design, he started working for the Braun company in 1955, and was the head of its design centre from 1961 to 1995.

[ Dieter Rams: Ten commandments on design ]
[ London's Design Museum page on Dieter Rams ]
[ Interview with Dieter Rams , Icon 010, February 2004 ]

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