The timelessness of Dieter Rams’ work is evident in the fact that his work has influenced many artists from different art movements along four decades of his career. Richard Hamilton, a pioneer of the Pop Art movement has cited him as one of his inspirations saying, “My admiration for [Dieter Rams’ work] is intense and I have for years been uniquely attracted towards his design sensibility. So much so that his consumer products have come to occupy a place in my heart and consciousness that the Mont Sainte-Victoire did in Cézanne’s.” Donald Judd, one of the early leaders of the Minimalist movement when speaking about his own furniture, has “lauded Rams’ appliances for Braun.” Dieter Rams seems to have been successful in dodging obsolescence but ironically, in his effort to discard trends and style, he has created a new aesthetic. This has become obvious in the recent exhibition, “Less is More” held by Museum of Modern Art from the August 27, 2011 to February 20, 2012, showcasing most of Dieter Rams’ work over the years as modern art. The influence of his work is apparent in designs by Apple’s industrial designer, Jony Ive. Although a product designer himself, his principles have influenced a new era of software interface designers and graphic designers.

During his career, Dieter Rams as a way to gauge his own work set ten principles of good design. According to him,

1. Good Design Is Innovative — The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself. 2. Good Design Makes a Product Useful — A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it. 3. Good Design Is Aesthetic — The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful. 4. Good Design Makes A Product Understandable — It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory. 5. Good Design Is Unobtrusive — Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression. 6. Good Design Is Honest — It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept 7. Good Design Is Long-lasting — It avoids being fashionable and therefor never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years — even in today’s throwaway society. 8. Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail — Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards th consumer. 9. Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly — Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product. 10. Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible — Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

These ten principles have proved to be highly influential to modern designers and have acted as guidelines for various fields from Graphic Design, Furniture Design, Interaction Design to Industrial Design.

Dieter Rams’ education and the people he came in contact with at the beginning of his career greatly helped in the formation of his design ideology. He was influenced by and has lead the Functionalist movement through four decades of ever-changing art trends and movements. His products that have not fallen prey to technological irrelevance are still in production and those that have fallen prey are now sought after collectibles. By closely observing his products it is easy to see how each of them affected and inspired other art movements along the years and also generations of designers to come who have adopted his ideology to continue in his footsteps. Dieter Rams through his effort to practice Functionalist design has created timeless designs that have beaten trends and obsolescence and has thus had a profound effect on modern design.