10 principles of Good Design

Dieter Rams lists ten principles of “good design” and organizes them as criteria for evaluating products. The text argues that good design follows technological innovation, serves use, makes the product understandable, and avoids excess, while preserving the user’s expression and reducing environmental impact.

Reading notes

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• Innovation in design remains open, but it depends on technological progress and should not be an end in itself.
• A product needs to be useful and meet functional, psychological, and aesthetic criteria.
• Aesthetic quality is part of usefulness, because products are used in everyday life and affect well-being.
• Design should clarify the structure of the product and, when possible, make it self-explanatory.
• Products with a purpose should be neutral and restrained so as not to compete with the user’s expression.
• Design should not exaggerate capabilities or promise more than the product actually delivers.
• Good design avoids trends and seeks to last for many years.
• Every detail should be treated with care and precision, without arbitrariness.
• Design should conserve resources and reduce physical and visual pollution throughout the product’s life cycle.
• Less design, but better, means focusing on the essential and eliminating what is superfluous.