Design offers enormous value to a product and is better at grabbing the attention of customers than any miracle your product can do. Companies like Apple have inherited design as a core function of their products due to the strict guidelines of their legendary founder Steve Jobs and his right-hand man Jony Ive.
They have always adopted a minimalist approach to design, which has been imitated by numerous businesses hoping to replicate their success. Today, buyers want to see well-designed products, whether they are physical products like phones or digital products like websites. Good design helps you stand out from the competition and improves your customers’ perception of your value.
The famed German industrial designer Dieter Rams is the source from whom even the brilliant Apple learned its design philosophies. During his tenure, Mr. Rams said that creating what he called “Good Design” requires adhering to a set of principles, and these principles came in a nice round number of 10.
- Is innovative.
- Makes a product useful.
- Is aesthetic.
- Makes a product understandable.
- Is unobtrusive.
- Is honest.
- Is long-lasting.
- Is thorough down to the last detail.
- Is environmentally friendly.
- Involves as little design as possible.
They are detailed below.
Good Design Is Innovative : By no means are the opportunities for innovation closed. Innovative design options are continually expanding thanks to technological advancement. Creative design, therefore, can never exist in a vacuum; it constantly evolves in concert with innovative technology.
Good Design Makes a Product Useful :An item is purchased to be utilized. It must meet a number of requirements, including psychological and aesthetic ones in addition to utilitarian ones. Good design highlights a product’s usefulness while excluding everything that can potentially take away from it.
Good Design Is Aesthetic : Because things are used every day and have an impact on people and their well-being, a product’s aesthetic value is essential to its utility. Stunning things can only be produced with excellence.
Good Design Makes A Product Understandable : The product’s structure is made clear by it. Even better, by utilizing the user’s intuition, it can enable the product to convey its function effectively. It can at most be explained by itself.
Good Design Is Unobtrusive : Products that have a function are similar to tools. They don’t qualify as either art or ornamental items. As a result, its design should be both impartial and constrained so that the user may express themselves.
Good Design Is Honest : It doesn’t transform a product into something more inventive, potent, or useful than it actually is. It doesn’t make empty promises to the customer in an effort to trick them.
Good Design Is Long-lasting : It doesn’t follow trends, therefore it never comes across as outdated. Even in today’s disposable world, it endures for many years in contrast to trendy design.
Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail : There must be no randomness or chance involved. Respect for the consumer is demonstrated in the design process via care and precision.
Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly :Design contributes significantly to the protection of the environment. Throughout the course of the product’s life, it minimizes physical and visible pollution while conserving resources.
Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible : Less is better since the emphasis is on the basics and the goods are not overburdened with extraneous features. Returning to simplicity and purity.
Rams had a significant impact on the design and functionality of most consumer goods used in the late 20th and early 21st century. We are surrounded by Rams’s signatures on everything from toothbrushes to coffeemakers and much more. Honesty, restraint, and simplicity are the hallmarks of his style.
“Things which are different in order to simply be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different.” – Dieter Rams
“My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.” – Dieter Rams
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