Dieter Rams' ten principles

디터 람스의 10원칙

Ten criteria for "what makes design good," distilled by German industrial designer Dieter Rams from decades of practice at Braun.

Also known as: Ten Principles of Good DesignZehn Thesen für gutes Design
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html
<div class="drp-card"><div class="drp-num">01</div><div class="drp-text"><div class="drp-en">Good design is innovative</div><div class="drp-ko">혁신적이다</div></div><div class="drp-dots"></div></div>
css
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js
const PRINCIPLES = [
  ['Good design is innovative', '혁신적이다'],
  ['Good design makes a product useful', '제품을 유용하게 만든다'],
  ['Good design is aesthetic', '미적이다'],
  ['Good design makes a product understandable', '이해하기 쉽게 만든다'],
  ['Good design is unobtrusive', '튀지 않는다'],
  ['Good design is honest', '정직하다'],
  ['Good design is long-lasting', '오래간다'],
  ['Good design is thorough down to the last detail', '마지막 디테일까지 철저하다'],
  ['Good design is environmentally friendly', '환경을 생각한다'],
  ['Good design is as little design as possible', '최소한으로 디자인한다'],
];
const num = document.querySelector('.drp-num');
const en = document.querySelector('.drp-en');
const ko = document.querySelector('.drp-ko');
const dots = document.querySelector('.drp-dots');
dots.innerHTML = PRINCIPLES.map(() => '<span></span>').join('');
const dotEls = [...dots.children];
let i = 0;
function render() {
  num.textContent = String(i + 1).padStart(2, '0');
  en.textContent = PRINCIPLES[i][0];
  ko.textContent = PRINCIPLES[i][1];
  dotEls.forEach((d, j) => d.classList.toggle('on', j === i));
}
render();
setInterval(() => { i = (i + 1) % PRINCIPLES.length; render(); }, 2000);

Dieter Rams (b. 1932) was chief designer at Braun through the 1960s–90s, shaping radios, calculators, and razors around the conviction that "less, but better" ("Weniger, aber besser") could be a working method, not just a slogan. Looking back on his own practice, he wrote down ten criteria for judging "is this good design?" — what's now widely cited as Dieter Rams' Ten Principles of Good Design.

The ten aren't ten independent boxes to check so much as ten angles on the same handful of concerns — "makes a product understandable" and "is unobtrusive" both aim at letting someone use a thing without fighting it; "thorough down to the last detail" and "honest" both insist that finishing touches shouldn't misrepresent the real materials or performance underneath. The tenth, "as little design as possible," works almost like a conclusion: even after a design passes the other nine, it asks whether there's still something left to remove.

The ten principles are widely credited with shaping the industrial design language of later electronics brands — Apple's design language most famously — and they translate directly onto digital products too: is it understandable, does it carry unnecessary ornament, does it hold up to years of daily use.

When to use

When auditing a product — or a screen — against the question "is this actually good design?"