10 Commandments of (Sustainable) Design
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 11.20.07
Image credits, clockwise from top left: MichaelMiesser, lepow, oregon and Tsja!
TreeHugger goes on and on about the importance of design; convincing folks to design the stuff we consume so that it better reflects the TreeHugger ethic is an extremely important step in moving our planet to a sustainable future. 10 Commandments of Design, conceived by German industrial designer Dieter Rams, sum this up well enough that we could just about put "sustainable" in the middle and call it good. Designers and fans of where stuff comes from, take heed:
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design helps a product to be understood
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is durable
8. Good design is consistent to the last detail
9. Good design is concerned with the environment
10. Good design is a s little design as possible
Succinct, minimal and endlessly useful; just like good design should be. via ::swissmiss
Number one is bogus.
Good design comes in all flavors and some of the very best design was done years and years ago.
Lots of the "innovative" stuff produced today is just plain ugly in many of our eyes. (If it floats your boat, fine. Just don't declare yourself judge and jury.)
Bob,
Can you provide some examples to back up your points?
You have to remember that items 1-10 have a direct lineage from the German Bauhaus which was extremely influential, even to this day. Dieter Rams is most certainly German and an adherent to Bauhaus principles to the nth degree. The Germans are a very practical people, you'd never see them make a device like Phillipe Starck's Juicy Salif which is a lightening rod of public opinion.
I don't think point number 1 is bogus at all & certainly fits in with the Treehugger manifesto when carbon footprints are taken into consideration, product life, packaging, etc.
A product needs to make itself useful, & have some aesthetic merits.
I agree with your second paragraph up to a point, cell phones/blackberries spring to mind. While they're certainly useful I find them to be a commodity item & for the most part highly unattractive & therefore don't inspire most people to covet or look after them thereby possibly extending their useful life. I like to think of design as being embedded into the "dna" of a product and not just a candy coating/marketing spin to make a device or object look attractive & move more units.
There are actually quite a few people designing objects today that would meet the above criteria, Ingo Maurer or Richard Sapper (his LED cantilevered lamp) spring to mind. Jonathan Ive of Apple would be another. Certainly the folks at Bang & Olufsen today, & Jacob Jensen studios in Denmark. Those last two are companies with an incredible history & are fascinating.
Bob,
Can you provide some examples to back up your points?
You have to remember that items 1-10 have a direct lineage from the German Bauhaus which was extremely influential, even to this day. Dieter Rams is most certainly German and an adherent to Bauhaus principles to the nth degree. The Germans are a very practical people, you'd never see them make a device like Phillipe Starck's Juicy Salif which is a lightening rod of public opinion.
I don't think point number 1 is bogus at all & certainly fits in with the Treehugger manifesto when carbon footprints are taken into consideration, product life, packaging, etc.
A product needs to make itself useful, & have some aesthetic merits.
I agree with your second paragraph up to a point, cell phones/blackberries spring to mind. While they're certainly useful I find them to be a commodity item & for the most part highly unattractive & therefore don't inspire most people to covet or look after them thereby possibly extending their useful life. I like to think of design as being embedded into the "dna" of a product and not just a candy coating/marketing spin to make a device or object look attractive & move more units.
There are actually quite a few people designing objects today that would meet the above criteria, Ingo Maurer or Richard Sapper (his LED cantilevered lamp) spring to mind. Jonathan Ive of Apple would be another. Certainly the folks at Bang & Olufsen today, & Jacob Jensen studios in Denmark. Those last two are companies with an incredible history & are fascinating.
Sorry for the double post, I have no idea why it did that!