Not a knob more than what you need. A TV designed by Dieter Rams. Image via Life as an Architect.

“Weniger, aber besser” — less, but better.

Industrial designer Dieter Rams, born in Germany in 1932 (and still alive), was concerned with the chaos going on in the world around him: chaos as a result of the Wars, the Great Depression, and later, the more subtle, but also pernicious chaos of disposable design and planned obsolescence that was the purview of his trade.

Dieter Rams, no doubt arguing for understated avant garde. Image via We Heart.

In the early 1980s, when disposable culture was new and heated, Rams asked himself: Is my design good design? And rather than pat himself on the back with an unexamined “yes!”, Rams set out to define good design with a list as sparse and functional as his work. Moving from aesthetics to sustainability to (un)obstrusiveness, his now-famous Ten Principles of Good Design became one of his most enduring creations. Read it here, illustrated by his work: Good Design, Vitsoe.

Dieter Rams' barely designed Braun T1000 radio, closed. Image via Fuel Your Product Design.

Hardly more ornate when open. Image via Fuel Your Product Design.

Rams’ designs are simple and purposeful, with a clean and manageable appeal and an unfailing functionality that lasted. Rams hated the American cars coming off the assembly lines — to him they epitomized the evil of design that had to be updated every two years. His styles endure because he believes in designing objects as little as possible.

Dieter Rams' Nizo Super-8 camera. The design is still current, the technology, unfortunately not. Image via Cloud Front.

During his 34 years as head designer at Braun, he developed hundreds of designs, none of which had useless colors, baubles or textures. They were basically the opposite of today’s over-designed everyday objects — things like our modern-day garish toothbrushes with incomprehensible hinges, myriad bristle types, contrasting neon colors, rubber spots and pointlessly sinuous handles.

AWE IS A MOVING TARGET

While Rams’ designs are meant to be timeless, humanity is not is so constant. In a speech to the Braun supervisory board in 1980, Rams announced: “I think that good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times. They should – and must – question everything generally thought to be obvious. They must have an intuition for people’s changing attitudes. For the reality in which they live, for their dreams, their desires, their worries, their needs, their living habits. They must also be able to assess realistically the opportunities and bounds of technology.”

Influence at work. The Dieter Rams pocket radio's similarity to another iconic white music-playing box is not at all accidental. Image via the University of Houston.

(Image research by Michael Wojtas)

FURTHER READING

According to Dieter Rams, Apple is the only company to uphold his Ten Principles of Good Design. Dieter Rams vs. Jonathan Ive: The Future of Apple is in 1960s Braun, Gizmodo.

Before Dieter Rams, all record players were giant wood-and-brass things. Then he made “Snow White’s Coffin.” Rams tells the story: Dieter Rams by Cold War Modern, YouTube.

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams by Keiko Ueki-Polet and Klaus Klemp, Google Books.

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Here at Kaufmann Mercantile we can really get behind some tried and true technologies. Coffee makers that don’t need to be plugged in. Pens, pencils, paper. Wood instead of plastic; sea shells instead of plastic. Enter the Museum of Obsolete Objects to remind us of the technologies that have fallen by the wayside. Some of them are irretrievably obsolete and happily so (even if you could get into a time machine to the 1980s to pick up a floppy disk drive, would you want to?).

Others, like the phonograph, have been replaced many times over technologically, but there’s never been a good emotional replacement. The phonograph will never be obsolete in my house, and judging by how picked over used records stores are, mine is not the only one.

The Museum of Obsolete Objects is actually a YouTube channel — none of those stodgy old floors and walls and physical presence. The videos are produced by the Jung von Matt advertising agency. A scroll through the years will get you all bleary-eyed for a time when love songs were shared on mix tapes and math didn’t get more complicated than what an abacus could do.

(Warning: The intonation-lacking, staccato voice of the robot woman narrating each video inadvertently and unfortunately makes a point: sometimes obsolescence is the result of being irritating.)

What are some things you’d be sad to see in the Museum of Obsolete Objects?

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A young Danny Hillis hard at work at his connections machine console.

During the 1980s and 90s, Hillis developed and debuted the first “parallel” supercomputer, which efficiently processes hundreds to millions of pieces of information simultaneously, much in the same way the human mind works. This supercomputer, dubbed the Connection Machine, dramatically augmented the way that databases and computing systems work. Prior to Hillis’s invention, industries, markets and governments relied on “sequential” computers that slowly synthesized only one item at a time. It was truly an innovation for the ages; an invention that our very modern existence is hinged upon. The Connection Machine grew to such fame that it even made a cameo in Steve Speilberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and today, most all supercomputers are based on Hillis’s initial design.

Danny Hillis, older and slower.

But the constant demand for bigger, faster systems prompted Hillis to pause and think about the long-term consequences of the frenetic pace of the new epoch. In 1993, Hillis wrote a contemplative, thought-provoking email to friends that was eventually parlayed into a 1995 article for Wired magazine. Hillis proposed that action be taken to slow down time for the sake of the fast-approaching future. Rallying his varied cast of friends, including musician Peter Gabriel, writer Stewart Brand and composer Brian Eno (the chimes of the Clock of the Long Now inspired the album January 07003 Bell Studies CD) among others, Hillis conceived of the idea to build a monument-sized clock that would last an epic 10,000 years.

Prototype in miniature of what will be the Clock of the Long Now.

What sounded like a work of science fiction or at least a pipe dream became a certain reality with the founding of the Long Now Foundation, and the crucial financial backing of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com; Mitchel Kapor, founder of Lotus software; Jay Walker, founder of Priceline.com, and his family; and Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

It may seem contradictory that some of the biggest contributors to our current, technologically-aided, fast-paced way of life are seeking to slow things down, but as Long Now Foundation Executive Director Alexander Rose explains:

“I would say that it is precisely this close relationship to accelerating aspects of our culture that sensitized our founding board and core funders to what we all miss if we don’t pay attention to the slower and deeper opportunities. The Clock project in particular is a response that Danny [Hillis] had to people constantly asking him to build ever-faster computers. It made him wonder what we were missing in the slow space.”

In 1999, Hillis and his associates completed the first prototype of the Clock of the Long Now, a small-scale version currently on-view at the London Science Museum. The final monumental Clock will primarily be made of stainless steel, titanium and Monel, a mixed-metal alloy that was patented in 1906 and typically found in aerospace and submarine applications due to its high resistance to corrosion.

Pieces and early prototypes of the Clock of the Long Now on exhibit at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California.

The ball bearings of the clock will be fabricated out of silicon nitride, a type of manufactured hard ceramic mass-marketed since the 1950s for moving car and space shuttle parts. In nature, silicon nitride is only found in miniscule amounts in fallen meteorites. It is extremely wear-resistant and does not require lubrication, making it ideal for the 10,000 year lifespan of the Clock of the Long Now.

The year 02,000. Only 1/5 of the way to the year 10,000.

As is fitting with the rationale for fostering future responsibility, the clock’s torsional pendulum will require periodic power through human winding. The accuracy of the clock will adjust with alignment to the sun.

The team is now at work on the second prototype, implementing advanced-wear testing to simulate the conditions the parts will face over 10,000 years to ensure the movements and ball-bearings last into the future as projected. Plots of land have been purchased for the installation of two colossal clocks: the previously mentioned site in eastern Nevada and the 2005 acquisition of land in Van Horn, Texas.

The weights and balances of the Long Now. Pieces that could very well outlast humanity.

In addition to the consideration put into choosing the materials, the crux of the strategy for preserving the Clock for 10,000 years is to build most of the structure underground. Hillis cites a couple of long-lasting forerunners as prime examples: “The only way to survive over the long run is to be made of materials large and worthless, like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, or to become lost.”

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Chicken Processing Plant, China, 2005, image by Edward Burtynsky

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) use 75% less energy to power and have up to 10 times the life span. You get 8,000 hours of light compared to 800. CFLs win the efficiency of use contest, but to this day three out of every four sockets in the U.S. still contain the least efficient bulb available on the market, the 100-year-old incandescent bulb. Clearly there’s more at hand than energy efficiency.

The warm company of a good lamp. Film still from In the Mood for Love (2000) by Wong Kar Wai.

America is hesitating at the register on CFLs partly because they cost more money up front, and partly because they are ugly. The cheapest CFLs cast a universally unflattering, cold light, and while some are better than others, no CFL so far can replicate the warm, saturated glow of incandescents.

Apparently, we’re not up for changing the world if we have to change it to a creepy blue one.

Westinghouse ad for looks-enhancing bulbs.

THE FEELING OF LIGHT
There are two ways to think about the way light looks: its ‘color temperature’ and its ‘color rendering index’ — the way the light colors objects and surfaces. We read/feel incandescent bulbs like we do flames, when it’s all the way up, we read it white (like the hottest center of a flame) and as it dims, we read it warm and yellow like the outer tip of candle light. Incandescents cast a saturating glow on the space around it.

We read/feel fluorescent bulbs the opposite: cold and blue, making everything around it seem dead and uninviting. That dimmer switch is no help either, fluorescent light only becomes colder and eerier the dimmer the bulb gets.

When light bulbs needed to be advertised. Vintage ads from Philips.

When buying CFLs, talk to someone who works at the hardware store, or just buy a few different brands, some different wattages, some bright white, some daylight, some soft white and see what looks best to you in your space.

Mixing incandescents with fluorescents can work well to soften the harshness of CFLs, but mixing CFL brands and colors could produce a rather unsettling effect, so be systematic. Also, techniques are improving and new CFLs more closely mimic the visual effect of incandescent light in bulb appearance and light color quality.

HOLD YOUR BREATH
It is worth noting that CFLs don’t fulfill all their claims. Price pressures and government subsidies compromise quality. A large number of CFL bulbs are shipped with faulty ballasts, so they don’t last as long as they claim.

Uncle Sam testing light bulbs, 1938, Harris & Ewing Collection, image via Shorpy.

Shoddy, and also unsafe. Fluorescent light is created by exited mercury vapor racing back and forth. Mercury is a poison that affects the nervous system, endocrine glands, kidneys and other organs. Symptoms vary with severity, but they all suck and should be avoided. There’s less mercury in a CFL bulb than a watch battery, and way less than a thermometer, but there are more of them, and they break. If you break a light bulb, the EPA advises you to evacuate the room of humans and animals, shut the broken pieces into an airtight container and dispose of it in a properly designated landfill (to keep the mercury from leaching into our soil and water).

Basically, we can only handle CFLs in rooms that can be ventilated and easily evacuated, or risk human and puppy hazard.

Besides individual and environmental dangers, there’s a human cost to CFLs: Closing incandescent factories shed jobs in the U.S., and Chinese workers are suffering Dickens-style health problems from working in CFL factories.

Death warmed over with a hotter color rendering index. Vintage ad from General Telephone & Electronics.

As if that’s not enough, more energy is expended making and using CFLs. They don’t do the two-for-one room heating that incandescents do, so gains there are off-set to some degree by higher heating costs. A Danish study also found that it took 1.8 kilowatt hours of electricity to assemble a CFL compared to 0.11 kilowatt hours to assemble an incandescent bulb. The bulbs are also heavier and take more energy and money to transport.

These factors need to be considered when claiming that compact fluorescent lighting is leading the way to an energy efficient future.

Luckily scientists aren’t so quick to give up on incandescent lighting. Improvements aren’t far in the horizon and hybrids are trickling out into the market. They may not be quite as energy efficient as CFLs claim to be, but neither are CFLs.

FURTHER READING
Reduced mercury bulbs, Metropolis Mag
Can Incandescent Bulbs Compete on Efficiency? The New York Times
Plumen, the designer energy-saving light bulb
GE Hybrid Light Bulb Solves CFL Issues, CNet News
We considered neither the climate change-denying nor the libertarian aspects of CFLs, but here it is from the New York Times’ Room for Debate section: The Politicized Light Bulb

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No. 556, 1956, Table Lamp, height 48 cm

Though celebrated during his lifetime, Sarfatti’s contribution to lighting has gone surprisingly unexamined. Only one monograph of his work, an exhibition catalog published by Galerie Christine Diegoni and edited by Frédéric Leibovitz, exists, and it’s easier to find him mentioned in showroom press releases than in histories of mid-century Italian design.

But as a 2003 article by Gilles de Bure subtly suggested, this may have something to do with Sarfatti’s own aversion to art with a capital “A.” He saw himself as technician and craftsman, interested in “innovating rather than prettifying.”

Gino Sarfatti, 1912 - 1984

Born in Venice in 1912, Sarfatti belonged to a storied family that included feminist critic Margherita Sarfatti, notorious for being Mussolini’s mistress and an enemy of fascism. He began studying aeronaval engineering at the University of Genoa, but did not finish due to family financial problems. Instead, he took a sales job at a Milan glass company, a twist of fate that undoubtedly informed his ultimate career path. Sarfatti designed his first light fixture in 1938 and founded a small workshop called Arteluce in 1939. Though he would flee to Switzerland during the Second World War, he would rebuild the workshop when he returned to Milan in 1945.

No. 213/sp, 1966, Wall Lamp

Arteluce began experimenting with Plexiglas as early as 1951, and pioneered the of use halogen in light fixtures in 1971. It won the Compasso D’oro Sarfatti for Table Lamp Model 559 in 1954, and again in 1955 for Model 1055. It also became a regular haunt for some of Italy’s most exciting young designers, among them Franco Albini, Gianfranco Frattini, Vittoriano Vigano and Marco Zanusso. But award-winning and connectedness aside, it was Sarfatti’s almost clinical preoccupation with the working of bulbs, cords, and stands that set him apart.

No. 2102, Circa 1957, Ceiling Lamp

Certainly, an interest in bare-bones technology wasn’t unique among mid-century designers, but most aimed to create objects that were a sum of their parts. Sarfatti fixated on the parts. In Floor Lamp 1063, a model made in 1954 and now included in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, a vertical fluorescent tube is the light source, and a transformer on the floor provides both energy and balance. Each element feels wholly autonomous.

Twelve years later, Sarfatti made Lamp Model 600P, a metal and leather table fixture that presents the light bulb as if it were a baseball peeking out of a strangely elegant mitt. In 1971, just two years before Sarfatti sold Arteluce to the lighting company Flos, there was Model 608, a pair of wall sconces that look like little red bulb-bearing dishes, the cords hang down like tails. Like all of Sarfatti’s most engaging work, they’re unpretentiously elegant products of fine-tuned curiosity. And, of course, they’re all about the bulb.

No. 606, 1971, Table Lamp

FURTHER READING:
Light Emitting Wallpaper to Replace Lightbulbs? Business Pundit
Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge, The New York Times

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Its name is Junk.

Junk is the rusty, lovely, brilliant symbol of the dying years of your time. Junk is your ultimate landscape. – George Nelson, 1965

George Nelson Design for Herman Miller Clock Company, Circa 1950

The ball clock. The slat bench. The bubble lamp. I’m not suggesting that these specific icons of mid 20th century design are junk, but their wild popularity has continued to spawn a flood of cheaply-made imitations in the last years. On a more positive note, they’re a testament to the strong influence of George Nelson (1908-1986), the great designer who helped chart the course of American Modernism towards functionality and purpose for over 50 years.

George Nelson, 1935

After completing degrees in both art and architecture, Nelson began what many see as one of the most successful careers in the design world. It started when the young graduate decided to tour Europe and interview the leading avant-garde designers in the hope that he could sell his articles to a publication back home. The the idea paid off: American readers were soon introduced to the likes of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Gió Ponti. And it earned Nelson the respect of D.J. DePree, the head the Herman Miller Furniture Company who asked the young architect to be his new director of design. The Howard Miller Clock Company, headed by financier Herman Miller’s son, contracted Nelson in 1947 for a series of clocks and bubble lamps, winning Nelson more respect in the design world.

It was during this time that Nelson truly began to develop his design experience on multiple fronts, creating packaging, corporate logos for his own firm, solving interior design problems, and through countless conferences, essays and articles, explored design in its entirety, looking for solutions and an answer to the demand for modern products, all created by the new post-war prosperity.

Nelson was not one to simply push product for the sake of corporate success; he made it a mission to help people see that there was a rational process driving good design, one that would clearly benefit those who trained themselves to look beyond visual style.

Inside the Flip Clock

This philosophy was evident in one of his earliest designs, a flip clock, which he designed for Howard Miller. Miller’s own sense of engineering (he learned clock making from his father in Germany) paired well with Nelson’s American ingenuity, which in this case was focused on making the actual mechanical processes visually evident. Whereas many flip clocks of the ’60s and ’70s were made from plastics (take Gino Valle’s Cifra 3, for example), Nelson’s flip clock is much more tactile. The internal mechanisms are beautiful, the materials elemental, the entire clock an encapsulated sensory experience. Nelson chose to display the miniature engineering feat in a glass case (not plastic or bakelite) and finished it with natural walnut accents.

Howard Miller Clock Company, Zeeland, Michigan

The designer is at his best when he uses those natural materials such as walnut, rosewood, or maple in his office furniture, or ceramic and steel in his clocks, and a simple clean geometry that communicates functionality and beauty as much today as it did 50 years ago. These sober examples of his work lack the commercial kitsch of his more playful pieces, but may be truer representations of what he refers to in his 1965 speech as the “crowning glory” of civilization. They are most definitely not “junk”, but carefully thought out solutions for living. These designs demonstrate a beautiful logic much needed in a synthetic, plastic world where junk has flooded the market in the years since.

George Nelson, Courtesy of Vitra

Howard Miller (1905 - 1995)

Images of Clock by Frank and Oliver.

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Telefunken Match Transistor Radio 1963

As often with technology, prices dropped fast. By 1963, when the Telefunken Match came out, transistor radios were widespread. People didn’t need much convincing that being able to listen to music and the news almost anywhere was a good thing.

The Match was designed by Richard Sapper (born 1932) and is one of his lesser known creations. Sapper, who has more than fifteen of his designs in the permanent MoMA collection, doesn’t like to stick to what he knows. He constructed clocks, cars, car tires, lamps, TVs, coffee makers, furniture, telephones and many other things. He says that this approach allows him to transfer knowledge of material and technology from one industry to the next.

Sapper also designed the original IBM ThinkPad laptop, making a drastic change to the company’s appearance. Apparently IBM managers were shocked when they found out that roughly one-third of the ThinkPad’s sales were due to its design, and not its technology.

In this interview Sapper explains that he wants to create a close relation between the owner and the product – like a teddy bear to a baby. This he considers, other than supporting the function, is the most important purpose of design.

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Braun Micron (5410), 1976

My first electric shaver was an old one my father didn’t use anymore – a Braun Micron from the ’70s. It’s made out of plastic and aluminum. In some old products, plastic has the ability to look good. Having come to a full understanding of plastic’s negative environmental impact and the widespread use of low quality plastics today, products made of this ubiquitous material are usually a visual and psychological turn-off for me.

Max Braun introduced his first model of electric shavers, the S50, in 1951. He founded Braun in 1921, but true success arrived when the S50 came out. Previously, the company had thrived by manufacturing radios and record players, until the factory was destroyed during WWII. Production resumed again in 1947 after the war had ended and the factory had been rebuilt.

Braun Standard S50 (L80), 1951 / photos by marratime @ Picasa

The company’s excellent reputation for design and quality is mainly due to Dieter Rams. He joined the company in 1956 as one of 16 designers and started overseeing product design in 1961. He kept this position for an incredible 34 years. Rams, who also began designing furniture 1957 – is still an active designer and design consultant today.

Under Rams guidance, the classic Braun shavers appeared on the market. The Sixtant was a thick and solid little piece of machinery whose operating sound would make you believe that inside, a small locomotive was powering the thing. There is an air of myth around the model, as most of them still function perfectly today. And the two parts that require repeated exchange are still widely available – the block of blades and the thin metal foil that wraps around it.

Braun Sixtant Special SM2 (5220), 1963

Braun Sixtant SM3 (5310), 1962

Rams’s credo is “less, but better”. In an interview with Design Boom he is asked to describe his style: “In Japanese they say ‘wabi sabi’. Together these two concepts mean ‘tranquility, simplicity, balance’, but also ‘liveliness’. This is a point of reference for me… I have always been interested in mixing materials, in my earliest furniture designs. I mixed wood with plastic or aluminum”.

Braun Sixtant S (5330), 1968

About whether form follows function, Rams says “yes, form has to come after function, I can’t conceive of it in any other way. There are certainly psychological functions as well, it is a matter of balancing the aesthetic content with regard to use.” As other designers of influence, he names Jasper Morisson and George Nelson.

After Rams left Braun, the design of their products went downhill. Their current product line is a disaster in my mind. It probably didn’t help much in terms of design and quality when the company was swallowed by Procter and Gamble.

Unless you still have an old Braun, a wet shave seems the only solution.

Braun Cosmetic Shaver (5650), 1971 / photos by midcenturydesign @ flickr

Lady Braun Elegance (5660), 1979

Braun Cosmetic Shaver (5650), 1971

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