Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Design

Good design is universal - no matter what you're building.

Dieter Rams is the legendary German industrial designer behind Braun’s iconic products from 1955 to 1997(!). His career was built around designing physical objects, from furniture to shelving to hifi systems.

Rams' designs are iconic for a reason: he had a deliberate, principled approach to building products that worked and felt good, which he eventually codified into the Principles of Good Design.

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

The principles themselves are written with a focus on simplicity and clarity: winnowed down to exactly the essential elements of good design.

These weren’t written with Figma or React in mind. But when you’re building software, especially products people spend hours in every day, it turns out physical object rules apply just fine.

There is a reason we talk about these principles, even 60 years later. They are mantras for building products that work well, feel good, and stick around.

Apple has historically been the poster child for Rams-style design. Some of their most successul products have had hallmark features of Rams' principles. The original iPod takes much of its physical design from the Braun T3, a transistor radio made in 1958.

It's fair to say that Apple has earned their reputation for great design.

But the new direction in iOS 26 feels... different.

The new Liquid Glass aesthetic looks fresh, futuristic, and bold. But it also cranks the aesthetic dial to 11 and turns everything else down. It's pretty, but at the expense of clarity.

At the IOS26 launch, apple execs praised the new design for putting content at the center of the IOS. In practice, the interface draws attention to itself. Shiny, translucent buttons and frosted glass backgrounds make everything a little more difficult to focus on, and a little more distracting.

It was so distracting that during the beta period after the announcment of the new design language, Apple pulled back dramatically on the amount of glassy translucent elements in the interface (a great decision, in my opinion).

Even still, it’s a design that feels like it was made to impress other designers. Not to help people get things done. The new design is bold, but it’s not particularly useful. It’s aesthetic, but not unobtrusive.

And that’s the real test: When the design is working, people don’t notice it. When it’s not, they notice everything.

It's unlikely that Apple set out to make a less usable product. More likely, they got caught up in the excitement of a new design language and pushed it too far. In recent years, their executive suite has shifted away from product-focused, design-minded leaders -- which can be felt in moments like this.

Design work is a continuous practice of balancing the principles. It’s easy to get caught up in one aspect of design (aesthetics, innovation, etc) and lose sight of the whole.

When I reflect on products that get out of the way and let me do my work, I can see Rams' principles at play. Products like:

• Superhuman: a beautifully designed email client that focuses on speed and clarity. (transparency note: Superhuman is a past sponsor of Tiny Improvements)
• LogSeq: a note-taking app where taking notes is the focus, rather than organizing notes.
• VS Code: An IDE that strikes a balance between speed, usability, and extensiveness, that grows with developers as they become more sophisticated.

The Principles of Design still hold up, even in a world of hover states, folding screens, and haptic feedback. The tools change, but the job doesn’t: design should serve the person using it. Not impress the person who made it.

So the next time you're building something new, ask yourself: Am I adding more design? Or am I adding more clarity?

Rams designed with clarity. Restraint. Respect for the person using the product.

So should we.