Dieter Rams is one of the most influential product designers of the twentieth century. Even if you don’t immediately recognize his name, you have almost certainly used one of the radios, clocks, lighters, juicers, shelves or hundreds of other products he designed.

He is famous not only for this vast array of well-formed products, but for his remarkably prescient ideas about the correct function of design in the messy, out-of-control world we inhabit today.

These ideas are summed up in his ‘ten principles’ of good design: Good design is innovative, useful, and aesthetic. Good design should be make a product easily understood. Good design is unobtrusive, honest, durable, thorough, and concerned with the environment. Most of all, good design is as little design as possible.

Photographer Florian Böhm was invited to document the archive and Rams' house, providing a previously unseen look at the world of Dieter Rams.

Dieter Rams, Braun promotional material and image of the 606 shelving programme and prototypes for handles in the workshop, Rams House, Kronberg, Frankfurt, Germany

'It was exciting to browse through the densely preserved collection of Braun design history - which is mostly Dieter Rams',' enthuses Böhm. 'Larger objects in the archive stood out, corridors of TVs for example, but a lot of the archived products were concealed in boxes or in shelves, and often in closed storage units. Only a small amount was easily accessible with the camera, more or less by chance, when openly placed, in transition from one place to another or more visibly wrapped in clear plastic.'

PC 3 record player with spare parts for other hi-fi systems and face plate for hi-fi unit, Braun Archive, Kronberg, Frankfurt, Germany

Böhm continues: 'My interest was the condition of the archive, the site itself and the kind of mutated nature these objects seem to have developed within the archive arrangements and their new purpose in this context. I am fascinated with the reality of a physical archive and the analog logistics involved - the labelling, shelving, lighting, protection and accessibility. The preserved objects remain unused and seem to convert to pure information, as carriers of cultural identity.'

Dieter Rams seated in chair from 620 chair programme and with TG 550 reel-to-reel tape recorder, Rams House, Kronberg, Frankfurt, Germany

Rams' house - his only piece of architecture - is remarkable for the detail and the design principles applied to it. 'One idea was to follow Rams through the house while he was telling personal anecdotes about objects that are meaningful to him,' Böhm explains of his approach to photographing the house. 'A zoom into the higher resolution of the space, a macro view on the personal arrangement of things, beyond the ridged functional first impression of the space, for example, the workshop in the basement of his house, is full of interesting objects and traces of Rams.'

Dieter Rams, a prototype for a chair and and SK 4 record player, Rams House, Kronberg, Frankfurt, Germany

Book for sale on Amazon: Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible
By Sophie Lovell and Klaus Kemp - Foreword by Jonathan Ive
Edited by Phaidon Press

Ashcraft Design created a pair of high end headphones with an eye towards using environmentally friendly materials. 

The Aria headphones are a combination of recycled materials and advanced audio technology. The headband is wrapped in wood recycled from acoustic guitars of musicians located around the world, the satin spun finished earcups are made from reclaimed aluminum.  The leather surrounding the earcups and the quilted leather lining the underside of the headband are reclaimed from bags, jackets and other articles of clothing from musicians located around the world.  The leather is reworked and conditioned to provide a soft and comfortable fit for the user’s ears.  This allows for ambient noises to be blocked out while retaining a clear, crisp sound from the music within. 

The Aria headphones houses 40 millimeter titanium-plated drivers tuned to deliver extreme clarity in highs and lows, enhancing yet maintaining the purity of the musicians true intention. 

Using maize bio-plastic and bamboo trim, Elium Studio is extending its research on materials applied to household products.

The designers have looked at small electronics for the home in eco-friendly mode: radio with rechargeable battery by manual wind-up, clock, alarm clock, calculator and pocket flashlight with solar-powered battery. A range of eco-design pieces for Lexon.

As for the finish qualities of maize bio-plastic, which is matt rather than the super shiny plastic, they are honed and counter-balanced by the addition of bamboo for the covering. This is a technically bold option that adds an artisan touch to mass production and gets around the problem of appearance-fade, since bamboo takes on an elegant patina with use where ordinary plastics age badly.

The i24R3Portable is an extension of the i24R3 wireless speaker project collaboration between EOps and Michael Young studio. The i24R3Portable is a family of portable speakers with various specific functional configurations to suit different user lifestyles.

"This project is about a serious portable waterproof speaker, I have always wanted one myself but there are big constraints to achieve the best sound quality while being waterproof and lightweight. The conventional waterproof speaker drivers are simply not up to the job. We have achieved a fundamental improvement in waterproof portable speaker design by using a totally sealed sound chamber design with light weight and powerful flat panel speakers and passive radiators which can provide really strong music perfomance. And the circular form and the thickness of the i24R3Portable speaker happens to be the most appropriate form that can satisfy the challenging engineering requirement and coincidentally also look nice with the original i24R3 wireless speaker system. The i24R3Portable comes with a tube stand that is very unconventional for a portable speaker. The tube stand is something playful but people can use it like a handle for portability like carrying the speaker from indoor living room to the balcony but it is also removable so that people can mount the speaker in the wall if they want.", Michael Young (UK).

The different versions available allow the user to listen to music via PC or Mac computers, mobile phones, IPhones or MP3Players.

For 40 years, from 1955 until 1995, Dieter Rams designed or oversaw the design of over 500 products for the German electronics manufacturer Braun, as well as furniture for Vitsœ.  Audio equipment, calculators, shavers and shelving systems are just some of the products created by Dieter Rams, each item holds a special place in the history of industrial and furniture design and has established Dieter Rams as one of the most influential designers of the late 20th century.

Dieter Rams, 1969 © Dieter Rams

This exhibition is the first UK definitive retrospective of Dieter Rams’ career in over 12 years. Showcasing landmark designs for both Braun and Vitsœ, this exhibition will examine how Dieter Rams’ design ethos inspired and challenged perceptions of domestic design and assesses Dieter Rams’ lasting influence on today’s design landscape. Archive film footage, models, sketches and prototypes will be displayed alongside specially commissioned interviews with Dieter Rams’ contemporaries, which include Jonathon Ive, Jasper Morrison, Sam Hecht and Naoto Fukasawa.

Electric shaver, 1970 Design: Dieter Rams Manufacturer: Braun	Control ET44 calculator, 1978 Design: Dieter Rams Manufacturer: Braun

Dieter Rams’ elegant products challenged original concepts of design thought by reducing electrical switches to a minimum and arranging them in an orderly manner, transparent plastics and wooden veneers were mixed and colour schemes were limited to tones of pure whites and greys, the only splash of colour being allocated to switches and dials.

P1 pocket record player, 1959 and T41 pocket radio, 1956 Design: Dieter Rams, Manufacturer: Braun	SK4 record player, 1956 Design: Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot Manufacturer: Braun

Dieter Rams defined an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual design language, identified through his ‘Ten Principles’ of good design, which, amongst others stated that good design should be innovative, aesthetic, durable and useful. Heavily influenced by the Bauhaus and Ulm School of Art in Germany, Dieter Rams pioneered a design spirit which embraced modernity and placed functionality above everything else, resulting in designs that were free of decoration, simple in function and embodied a cohesive sense of order.  Born in Germany in 1932, Dieter Rams trained in architecture and interior design before joining Braun in 1955 where he took advantage of electronic and
engineering advances made during the Second World War to realise a sophisticated re-interpretation of domestic appliances.

606 Universal Shelving system Design: Dieter Rams Manufacturer: Vitsœ	LE1 loudspeaker, 1960 Design: Dieter Rams Manufacturer: Braun

Dieter Rams - Less and More
Exhibition from November 18 2009 to March 14 2010
Design Museum London 

The Panasonic Design Museum is an online museum which provides information regarding Panasonic's rich history. It includes an exclusive collection of remarkable product designs dating back to 1918. 

	Improved attachment plug The very first product to be manufactured by Matsushita Electric was an innovative attachment plug, designed by Konosuke Matsushita himself. Uniquely, the plug was made from resin, and showed characteristic forward thinking, recycling the metal screw-in sections of used light bulbs.
5-Tube Radio PS-54	Plastic Body Vacuum MC-1000
Panapet Ball and Chain Radio R-70	Toot-A-Loop Radio R-72
Reel To Reel Deck RS-1500	Record Player SL-10
Lumix Digital Camera DMC-FX7	Digital Audio Player SV-MP510V