Author: Mary Gow

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Ten Design Principles Worth Remembering

I was curious who was channeling Steve Jobs’ sense of style as I walked through the Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (showing through February 20, 2012).

Actually it’s the other way around. Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple is among those designers who have pointed to Dieter Rams as influential in their methodology.

Dieter Rams was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1932. He was head of the Braun design team for several decades and oversaw the design of more than 500 consumer products including coffeemakers, calculators, radios, and audio/visual equipment. His work can be found in many museum collections around the world. In the SFMOMA show you’ll see some models and designs never before shown to the public.

Rams’s products exuded his ten design principles.

  1. Good Design is Innovative. Innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology and can never be an end in itself.
  2. Good Design makes a Product Useful. It emphasizes the usefulness of a product.
  3. Good Design is Aesthetic. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
  4. Good Design makes a Product Understandable. Make the product talk. It is self-explanatory.
  5. Good Design is Honest. It makes no promises that cannot be met.
  6. Good Design is Unobtrusive. It fulfills a purpose like tools.
  7. Good Design is Long-Lasting. It never appears antiquated.
  8. Good Design is Thorough Down to the Last Detail. There is nothing left to chance.
  9. Good Design is Environmentally Friendly. It conserves resources.
  10. Good Design is as Little Design as Possible. Less is better.

Rams said Apple is the only company currently designing products according to his design principles.

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3 Memorable Quotes from Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs combined his passion for innovation with art.

Watch how in his commencement speech he talks about the calligraphy class he took and how much impact it had on him.

“Real artists ship.” is among my most favorite quotes from Steve Jobs. In Linchpin, Are You Indispensable?, Seth Godin explains that shipping is not about perfection but getting things out the door.

An artist of worthy note (that ships) is the talented calligrapher, Thomas Ingmire.

“You’ve got to find what you love. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart you’ll know when you find it.”

“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Thank you Steve Jobs.

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Discovering Artist Nancy Adair

Lunch at the Lake
Lunch at the Lake, by Nancy Adair

I met Nancy Adair on a kayaking trip. At the the retreat center I spotted her expressive painting, Lunch at the Lake. The painting is about 36″ x 60″.

You can name an intersection in San Francisco and she’ll know exactly where it is because 25 years ago she drove cabs there. For the past two decades she’s been a painter, seeker and sometimes yoga/meditation teacher in Mendocino County.

She didn’t listen to a diagnosis that would require taking prescribed medicine, which she felt was “like wearing a glove on my psyche…not something I could handle as an artist.” Instead, Adair finds Vipassana the best medication.

She is also a filmmaker and one of the directors of the film Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. The film is a documentary about Gays and Lesbians and was considered groundbreaking at the time of its release in 1977. Her now deceased brother, Peter, was the producer. You’ll find Adair’s film streaming on Netflix.

Looks like I’ve found an artist with some audacity.