On Friday I went to the London Design Museum, it’s a fairly small place with only three exhibitions. Nevertheless it was educational and I found some quirky facts like that Braun clocks were always kept at 8 minutes past 10 in promotion photos because that’s the time the hands look most evenly spread. The exhibitions were on the surface just a big showcase for examples of great design accompanied by bits of text and videos explaining them.
If anyone’s interested I took down Dieter Ram’s ten principles of good design:
- be innovative
- make a product useful
- aesthetics – the aesthetic quality of a product is integral to it’s usefulness
- make a product understandable – clarify the product’s structure, make it ‘talk’ to the user
- unobtrusiveness – products are neither decorative objects nor works of art, they are tools to fulfill a purpose
- be thorough down to the last detail – nothing must be left to chance, the design process must be careful and accurate
- use as little design as possible – less, but better, concentrate on the essential aspects of a product, do not burden it with non-essentials
- honesty – do not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is
- be long-lasting – avoid fashion, that way your product will never look old
- be environmentally friendly
In other news, getting round London on a bike is near suicide. After a particular episode with a car which actually accelerated into a group of pedestrians I remembered all my fury and hate for cars. The drivers all put their foot down as long as possible until screeching to a halt at the next traffic light. Mental idiots who should all be banned from driving if you ask me. Pedestrians weren’t sympathetic either, they refused to believe that a cyclist should want to cycle on a cycle path and did their best to block us. Bastards.
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