Dieter Rams honoured at London Design Festival

The 81-year-old German designer accepted the Coutts Lifetime Achievement Medal last night in London

Dieter Rams probably has a very nicely fashioned shelf at home to display all his awards. In 1961, the German designer accepted a Supreme Award for his Braun TP1 portable record player at London’s Interplas plastics exhibition. In 1985, the Academia Mexicana de Diseño gave Rams their Académico de Honor Extranjero award. In 1996, the Industrial Designers Society of America also recognised Rams’ work with their World Design Medal.

So, the London Design Festival’s decision to include Rams among their London Design Medallists isn’t without precedence. Nevertheless, it was heartening to see the 81-year-old included alongside the iconic British graphic designer Peter Saville, recipient of the Panerai London Design Medal; the young Norwegian product designer Daniel Rybakken, who picked up the Swarovski Emerging Talent Medal; and Veuve Clicquot Design Entrepreneur winner David Constantine, co-creator of the Motivation wheelchair.

The London Design Medal

Rams collected his Coutts Lifetime Achievement Medal, alongside the other recipients at a gala dinner held in London’s Lancaster House last night. Congratulations to all. We hope you can find room on your shelves for this one, Dieter. For more on this, go here. For greater insight into Rams’ work, please take a look at our monograph, As Little Design As Possible.

Dieter Rams: As Little Design as PossibleSophie Lovell

Price AUD$135.00 Price CAD$135.00 Price £69.95 Price T105.00 Price USD$105.00

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.

In that spirit, this monograph is as little book as possible. It is a clear, comprehensive and beautiful presentation of Dieter Rams' life and his work. It is a must-have book for anyone interested in Rams' work, his legacy, and his ideas about how to live.

Specifications:

Format: Hardback
Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
Pages: 400 pp
Illustrations: 320 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714849188

Sophie Lovell was born in London. After graduating from the University of Sussex and Chelsea College of Art & Design, she moved to Berlin in 1994. She is a writer, curator and creative consultant as well as a long-term contributing editor and currently the Germany editor of the international lifestyle magazine Wallpaper*. She has written and edited several books on design and architecture including Limited Edition: Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art Furniture and Furnish – Furniture and Interior Design for the 21st Century.

"Shines by painting a refreshingly realistic picture of the design process... The easiest way to describe Mr. Rams’s impact on design is to say that he made Braun the “Apple” — in other words the It-brand — of its time."—Alice Rawsthorn, International Herald Tribune

"While many of the books about Dieter Rams are predominantly dry catalogues, Lovell's book examines the relevance of his work from a contemporary design standpoint by featuring interviews with some of today's top industrial designers..."—Apphia Michael, Wallpaper.com

"As Little Design as Possible is well-structured, thorough and provides background context to the many facets of Rams’s career, and also considers the continuation of his Ten Principles of Good Design."—Thomas Phongsathorn, V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum magazine)

"The design bible from the greatest industrial designer of the 20th century." —Tomas Maier, Esquire