The Brains and Braun of Dieter Rams

Chances are if you’ve shaved with an electric razor, blow-dried your hair or sparked up a cigarette in the past 60 years, you owe a debt of gratitude to Dieter Rams. During his four-plus decades working for Braun, many of which he also spent creating furniture for the British company Vitsoe, the German designer, 82, made a staggering number of stripped-down home goods and gadgets, many of which are as relevant now as the day they were conceived. Case in point: The same modular 606 Universal Shelving System bought in 1960 can still be seamlessly added to today and is as coveted by design aficionados as ever. But it is his ability to both inspire and confound successors like Jasper Morrison and Apple’s Jonathan Ive — spurred on by his prophetic principles of good design — that may be his greatest legacy. Describing Rams’s humble CSV 12 amplifier rotary switch in the foreword to the book “Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible,” Ive writes, “It could not be better, simpler, clearer or more beautiful.” In other words, less, but so much more.