Designer Dieter Rams – Vitsoe at English Wikipedia – via Wikimedia Commons

Blog / Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design

Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design

One of our many sources of inspiration at Vasser is a legendary German designer named Dieter Rams. He is famous for his work at Braun in the 1950s, and for his timeless, user-friendly and minimalist expression.

Published: 2. September 2022
Last updated: 10. September 2026

Examples of Rams' work include the Braun transistor radio, which Jonathan Ive and Apple have acknowledged as inspiration for Apple's design team during the development of the iPod.

Ive is a great admirer of Rams, and many design traits can be recognised in Apple's visual expression.

"My heart belongs to the details. I actually always found them to be more important than the big picture. Nothing works without details. They are everything, the baseline of quality"

– Dieter Rams

Relevance for developers and designers of modern websites

Rams came up with 10 rules for good design, which in this article I try to connect to website development and the digital design industry.

1. Good design is innovative

In our industry there is constant innovation. In frameworks, publishing systems, possibilities in web solutions, new physical devices, new accessibility requirements and more. All of this must constantly be weighed for new (and existing) projects.

Innovation can also be independent of the specific technical solution. Right down to fundamental questions like "what is the user looking for", and thinking out the best methods to answer the visitor's needs. This can, for example, be fresh thinking in a website's structure and navigation.

2. Good design makes a product useful

What use is a beautiful new website if it isn't useful to visitors?
Fundamental questions in developing a website should be which problems it is meant to solve. If products are to be sold on the website, the focus should perhaps be on why the products being sold actually solve problems, and further on making it intuitive and easy to buy them.

3. Good design is aesthetic

The aesthetics of a product are essential in relation to its usefulness. On a website, colours, typography and readability are parts of the aesthetic expression. All the parts combined affect both the usefulness and the feelings of the visitor.

“Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour”

― Dieter Rams

4. Good design makes a product understandable

To make a website understandable, clear goals and target audiences must be defined. You must keep the user in focus at all times, and how they can achieve what they are looking for in the best possible way. At its best, using the website is so intuitive that it is self-explanatory.

5. Good design is unobtrusive

Design should never be in the way or superfluous. The well-known phrase from Mies van der Rohe says "Less is more". If the design takes up too much space on a website, users may become confused and feel they lack an overview. Effects and animations should only be used if they lift the whole or provide practical value.

6. Good design is honest

What does it mean to have an honestly designed website? We feel it is about knowing your place as a designer. Focus on the fundamentals of what is being made. Buttons should clearly be buttons, and not be confused with links, for example. Give the user clear indications of what happens in the next steps of, say, a purchase process. Why do you use cookies? Be honest and explain.

7. Good design is long-lasting

Here you must combine your focus on the underlying technology and tools with an assessment of design trends. It is easy to get carried away following the most modern solutions, competitors and award-winning visual directions. Nevertheless, as with everything else in the world, it is always important to think for yourself before going in such directions. Long-lived design is often achieved as a result of considering all the other points on this list combined.

«When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.»

– Steve Jobs

8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail

Many concrete examples could be drawn from this, but as one example I'll pick responsiveness on a website. The well-known landscape iPad viewport rarely gets the love most designers know it could, and really should, have received. And even if it may not ruin everyone's sleep the way it might have Steve Jobs', it is definitely something you feel if you go for simplified solutions.

9. Good design is environmentally friendly

Websites are often overlooked as a climate measure. The reality is that power consumption connected to servers – and especially resource-heavy, poorly optimised websites – requires large amounts of electricity. Everything from the individual visitor's device (power and data usage), to the server itself and its constant back-and-forth between databases, CDNs and internal project files. It all comes down to the same thing: if the website is to become more environmentally friendly, you must take steps around things like a sustainable hosting platform, a focus on smart caching, and avoiding unnecessary loading of resources. Not only will this spare the environment, it will also save costs and time for clients.

10. Good design is as little design as possible

Back to the earlier quote "Less is more" – this is a timeless concept. Your job as a designer on a project is not to "leave your mark" on the product, but rather to solve the client's needs in the most effective way. Remove your own ego, and forget all your pre-made templates that worked for the previous client. Every client is unique and must be treated accordingly. Designing from the ground up is the only thing that makes sense. At least that's how we feel at Vasser. The vast majority of good visual identities and web solutions are tidy, with fewer visual elements than the average. Do fewer things, but better.

All ten principles together:

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible

These, then, are ways Dieter Rams influences our projects at Vasser. Perhaps it inspires others too :-)

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