Legendary less is more Industrial Design idol, Dieter Rams, is best known for his simplistic yet elegant designs for the German brand Braun. His Braun products, until his retirement from the head of design for Braun A.G. in 1998, ranged from shavers to audio equipment and created an important and lasting impact on the product design community. Apple's Industrial Design leader, Jonathan Ive, is highly influenced by Rams and it is very evident in the Apple product lineup.

Several Designs for Braun by Dieter Rams

The product design philosophy of Dieter Rams includes his ten principles to "good design". According to these: good design is innovative, makes a product useful, is aesthetic, makes a product understandable, is unobtrusive, is honest, is long-lasting, is thorough down to the last detail, is environmentally friendly, is as little design as possible.

In addition to the shavers and electronics for Braun; Dieter, along with co-designer Dietrich Lubs, designed and developed a number of amazingly styled timepieces. The Braun company recently decided to reissue several of these clean and classic utilitarian watches for purchase. It is said that the original aesthetics are maintained with the addition of a modest amount of modernization. It is also said that Deitrich Lubs himself has approved this reissue. Take a look.

Sampling of the Braun Classic Reissued Watches

Being a fan of electronic music, Ghostly International is a name that I am familiar with. One of the Ghostly founders Matthew Dear, as well as other Ghostly artists, are well known for their smooth beats and melodic melodies. Several years ago, Ghostly did a successful collaboration with Adult Swim by releasing the Ghostly Swim album.

In addition to producing polished sounds, Ghostly is dabbling in art and design with the Ghostly Store. This online design center features Dieter Rams style office accessories, audio equipment, and limited addition art prints.

The item in the store that stands out the most is the Inspiration Pad. This comes to us from Belgium Designer Marc Thomasset. The Inspiration pad re-imagines the age old sketch pad notebook by offering a variety of angles, curves, and perspective lines. I had a studio professor in design school that would start a product sketch by laying down a series of random lines and arcs. He would then begin to sculpt the form of a product out of the jumble.

The Inspiration Pad is an excellent tool for laying down the foundation of inspired sketches.

Take a look at the other well designed products and the limited art prints in the Ghostly Store.