Art Center will award legendary designer Dieter Rams an Honorary Doctorate Degree on Sat., April 20 at 4pm at its Spring Term 2013 Graduation. The event is free and open to the public. As chief of design at Braun from 1961 until retiring in 1997, Rams was responsible for innovative design in radios, watches, record players, coffee makers, shavers and other objects that continue to influence functionality and aesthetic in today’s products.
Legendary designer Dieter Rams, Braun Chief of Design.
Generations of designers have been inspired by Rams’ work. Apple design chief Jonathan Ive said Apple products could be seen as homage to Rams, who created “surfaces that were without apology, bold, pure, perfectly proportioned, coherent and effortless.”
Art Center student Andrew Kim, who is graduating this year and has been hired to work at Microsoft, said in an article about Art Center and Rams in the March/April issue of Pasadena Magazine that “every child needs a superhero to look up to, and he has been mine.”
In 1980 Rams asked himself: “Is my design good design?” His famous list of “10 principles for good design” values design that is simple, harmonious and timeless. On his tenth principle, Rams said, “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.”
