Dieter Rams is considered a design legend and the grandfather of the iPhone. There is a certain coincidence between him and the Eurovision Song Contest: Opulence meets less, but better.
Dieter Rams recently turned 85 years old. We all know that the man who played a decisive role in the design of the Braun company from 1956 to 1995, together with Hans Gugelot, among others, generated a series of electrical appliances that is still unparalleled today. At least since Jonathan Ives – Apple's chief designer – created a kind of virtual design kowtow in front of Dieter Rams in the form of a calculator app on the iPhone.
Rams' ascetic perm is also permanently fed into my neural network and is probably measurable magnetoencephalographically, when looking at a T1000 world receiver. No wonder, the functional quality of Rams equipment is still unsurpassed. Even after a drunken night and a completely blown celebrity fuse, it is easy to find the color-coded power button with the wiggly finger.
New ergonomics of use and understanding
Seen in this light, Rams is an almost perfect design follower of the "critical theory" of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Even in his early works, he shaped social product relations and developed a new ergonomics of use and understanding from the analysis of an often senseless product aesthetic of the post-war years.
No other designer has so revolutionized the dysfunctional and brusque functionality of the furniture construction dominated popular reception aesthetic of the 40s and 50s on the one hand, and on the other hand made the elitist, but politically regarded leftist, position of the Ulm School suitable for the masses.
But I also want to use these lines to put a few Rams theses back on the table. The explosiveness of his thoughts becomes increasingly clear in the context of a product world that relies on an economically eternally greeting marmot of mass production and pseudo-innovation. Many critical megatrends that our digital world likes to claim for itself, such as the hipster mantra of sustainability, authenticity and simplification, were already one of the main pillars of his design theory in the 1960s.
From today's perspective, product design in particular is becoming a formally oriented consumer entertainment program on the stage of countless 3D printers, thanks to digital production possibilities. These, in turn, are drudging up to capture the highly specific life models of a new caste of service universalists in products. Their energy-intensive, densely packed and event-oriented lifestyle does not need medieval beak masks to drive away the plague, but in their digital communities they rely on the modern heavy oil Exxon-Valdez version of the Black Death. Therefore here is a word-for-word Dieter-Rams ship of the Bottsand class, which, if used correctly, could provide more clarity in the economic oil spill.
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 durable.
Good design is consistent down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Even if he relates these theses to his product design world, many everyday objects in the current Web 4.0 world have long since mutated into suppliers of a supply chain for data highways. So it is necessary to apply this Rams "rhombus rescue handle" more generally in order to be able to judge the skidding course of our value system from a stable lateral position.
Merciful state
Seen from this position, our apparently so correct world shows itself in a pitiful state. The currently still most powerful man in the world exercises himself in a hitherto unknown unpredictability of a blond political wrestler, whose permanent over-selling separates rather tragically entertainingly than connects. He too, it seems to me, needs a brown reset button marked in colour. But this makes him just one of many representatives of a protectionist attitude that oscillates between collective euphoria and private romanticism.
Think of the strange combination of the presidential proclamation "America First" and the mirrored Trump Trutzburg in Manhattan (725 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10022), in which the family is spoiled in a media-effective way on velvet-soft giant cushions and a clear view of ornamentally framed ceiling frescos.
But anyone who now thinks he can pop the USA bashing corks is pointing the Veuve Cliquot luxury bottle straight at his own eye. Our European federalism is no better off: it is hurtling through an avenue of ego-drenched populist tree giants and would need a kind of Dieter Rams guardrail like the A-class, an electronic stability program.
But let's get back to design: unfortunately, designers and communication specialists usually answer many pressing questions with purely marketing-driven tools. This is probably the result of a lifelong influence, which sees perfection in a well-behaved increase in ratings. The strategy succeeds brilliantly in the economic dimension, but fails miserably when it comes to promising content.
Standard for European entertainment
An example of this failure and at the same time a bizarre yet relevant coincidence: 1956 - Rams began with Braun in the same year that Marcel Bezençon launched the Eurovision Song Contest. Rams invented a global design language that is still relevant today with the attempt to implement a product ethic, while Bezençon invented the first pan-European event format that achieved economic recognition through endless institutional broadcasting power. In the case of the Eurovision Song Contest, this became one of the most important collective and media-experienceable EU music experiences. Tragically, however, it also set a standard for European entertainment in which the hope for relevant content was similar to the search for climbable eight-thousand-metre peaks in the Wadden Sea.
Nevertheless - somehow admirable, because even today, when you look at German quota lighthouses such as the Summer Festival of Folk Music and the associated rapturously billowing groupie conglomerate, you ask yourself how a European component is and was conceivable in the context of such nationally oriented music events.
The quota fetishism of the media industry
Here, deep in the German mud of the media mudflats on the Teutonic screens, among others the male Funkenmariechen Florian Silbereisen throws perfectly opportunistic sound and event brekkies into the audience and proves to be a masterful arranger of a questionable nationally influenced musical lobotomy. Bezençon's idea of a European media product is much more interesting. But there is one flaw inherent in the system: the media industry's quota fetishism.
Content, as edgy and independent as a phono-radio combination SK55 by Rams, disappears in this populist-oriented media opinion-forming model in a poison cabinet of late night and early bird formats. The prime-time ratings head jelly is flanked by a no less flabby design dimension. In the case of the European Song Contest, the central motifs of the respective year attempt to communicate at least rudimentary content: in 2017, these were visually transposed elements from a traditional Ukrainian necklace - understandable, unobtrusive, honest - here even some of the Rams agenda is flashing up. If, on the other hand, one looks at the overall appearance, the corporate design elements of the overall event and the individual stage appearances of the countries, the design target group orientation is similar to a transfer to the associative Guantanamo.
Political and creative dimension
Entirely in the sense of stringent marketing considerations and in an almost obscene manner, a creative opportunity is being lived out here, the result of which is a distorted image of a European profile that is no longer recognisable to many people. Seen in this light, even profane communication formats such as ESC can trigger a special kind of sensitive (European) epilepsy, of which Playstation warns us every time it is restarted. Therefore, in relation to the perception of Europe at the ESC, one can speak of a political and creative dimension and the way the appearance is now, unfortunately.
So let's dive deeper into this pan-European competitive spectacle of visual experience dimensions. First dive and often underestimated focal point of identity is the logo, a kind of representative of values in super-compact format. In our ESC case it seems to have escaped a dynamic-serially guided Magic-Marker hand in the basement of a large agency. Dressed in a politically correct way, the logo places the respective country in the heart of the lettering. The fact that the second line "Song Contest" was originally designed in a brutalist typeface is partly due to the name of the font - it's the "Eurostyle" developed around 1960 by Aldo Novarese - but is also certainly historically based. For in 1957 there was also the first addition to the European Federation: the EEC. This was an uncomfortable decision in terms of design, because the letters had the elegance and power of a concrete mixer. Since 2017 this typeface has unfortunately been replaced.
Beyond the formal discussion about the logo and key visual, the design meltdown of the ESC begins with the apparently specific visual country appearances. Willingly or unwillingly, a kind of corporate stage design tries to create a European order in this tohowabohu.
ESC aberrations
Over the years, this unspeakable event set has developed into a Frankensteinesque event, in which archetypes of the simplest design on a streamlined stage take the reins: The insane fiddler, for example, who, whether on viola, violin or cello, wants to challenge the handsaw world record of Dirk Braun with his bow. The dark-haired Lord of the Rings ice princess with a geek-style tattoo, Wolpertinger girls from Romantic Fairy and Lara Croft egoshooter or a politically apparently correct Pocahontas construct are sometimes entertaining to look at, but anything but interesting. The digital mapping and pyrotechnical stun grenades ignited for this purpose, in harmony with the contourless entertainment from derivatives, give an inkling of an unconditional will for media impact, which gives almost every non-conformism or creative idealism a right Mike Tyson hook with subsequent knockout. To quote Adorno freely: this is a special medial form of "delusional connection".
In 2017 funny wobbling VW Bullis, Led masks, historical cannons and many seemingly meaningless things lined up on stage in such a way that at least in my case in the traffic jam of zero content an inevitable rear-end collision with a short-term entertainment-skull-brain-trauma followed. My home TV has more and more diagonal and black, but still no sense ABS or headbanging airbag. Nevertheless, it is pointless to list all these ESC aberrations further, because they are spread over us every day by many media formats. What interests me more is that the creative ESC winner mechanism 2017 has obviously not quite worked.
Unrelenting Italians and Portuguese, otherwise known for light Ramazotti muse and fado despair, have challenged this European mega-event this year with very different strategies
The Italian contribution has already been much discussed by insiders. Perhaps for this very reason, it defines a successful possibility in the environment of social media discourse to strike an individual, subversive and ironic hook in an overpowering industrial-design-media complex. Critical content with party option and holiday feeling - this was last seen on a national level with "Geiersturzflug" and "Brottosozialprodukt". As much as I personally find the positive evaluation difficult, we are dealing with a strategy that achieves more than conservative thinking would like to admit. I will try to translate the Italian content pearl of the light muse of Francesco Gabbani:
Title: Occidentali's Karma
Text: To be or must be, Hamlet's doubts, as present as in Neolithic man / make yourself comfortable in your 2 x 3 meter cage: intellectuals in the cafes, internet believers / honorary members in the group of anonymous selfie addicts / intelligence has gone out of fashion / simple answers / useless quandaries The crowd shouts its mantra, evolution stumbles / the naked monkey dances / it rains drops from Chanel on aseptic bodies / save yourself from the smell of your fellow human beings / all the smartwads on the web / cocaine for the people / opium for the poor / virtual humanity is sought.
If one considers the attempts to interpret "Occidentalis Karma" in the post-ESC-phase, which are still ongoing in the most diverse social strata and the research on terms such as Karma, Panta Rei, Hamlet etc. initiated by this, an interesting variant of the so often quoted educational mission of the public broadcaster seems to me to have succeeded here, involuntarily indeed, but on a European level.
In terms of content, Salvador Sobral's Portuguese contribution cannot compete with this, but it too marks a media crossroads that displaces the effect in favour of a presence on a European stage that is as simple as possible. Sobral is a soft indicator of a mass media communication that no longer follows any kind of marketing archetype, but defines a new form of shizophrenia in a positive way: individualism suitable for the masses.
And what do the Gabbani and Sobrals swimming in the pond of the light muse have to do with a creative heavyweight like Rams?
All three define different strategies of a social search for a collective ergonomics of understanding. Rams as the sublime classic icon of a reduced and clear product world, Gabbani and Sobral as short-lived formats of an ever faster spinning media world. Which brings us back to scraping along the boundaries of critical theory: Here, admittedly weighted very differently, an overpowering mythology, which defines itself through positivistic quota loyalty and sales figures, is confronted with an individual consciousness-forming position. The individual does not become an annulated protagonist, but rather options are opened up for him outside of the ergonomic or entertaining totality.
The crowd shouts its mantra, evolution stumbles, the naked monkey dances, it's really time for a new "less is more".
Peter Zizka
Dieter Rams is considered a design legend and the grandfather of the iPhone. There is a certain coincidence between him and the Eurovision Song Contest: Oppulence meets less, but better.
Dieter Rams recently turned 85 years old. We all know that the man who played a decisive role in the design of the Braun company from 1956 to 1995 and who, together with Hans Gugelot, among others, generated a series of electrical appliances that is still unparalleled today. At least since Jonathan Ives, Apple's chief designer, created a kind of virtual design kowtow in front of Dieter Rams in the form of a calculator app on the iphone.
Rams' ascetic perm is also permanently fed into my neural network and is probably measurable magnetoencephalographically, when looking at a T1000 world receiver. No wonder, the functional quality of Rams equipment is still unsurpassed. Even after a drunken night and a completely blown celebrity fuse, it is easy to find the color-coded power button with the wiggly finger.
New ergonomics of use and understanding
Seen in this light, Rams is an almost perfect design follower of the "critical theory" of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Even in his early works, he shaped social product relations and developed a new ergonomics of use and understanding from the analysis of an often senseless product aesthetic of the post-war years.
No other designer has so revolutionized the dysfunctional and brusque functionality of the furniture construction-dominated popular reception aesthetic of the 40s and 50s on the one hand, and on the other hand made the elitist, but politically seen quite leftist, position of the Ulm School suitable for the masses.
But I also want to use these lines to put a few Rams theses back on the table. The explosiveness of his thoughts becomes increasingly clear in the context of a product world that relies on an economically eternally greeting marmot of mass production and pseudo-innovation. Many critical megatrends that our digital world likes to claim for itself, such as the hipster mantra of sustainability, authenticity and simplification, were already one of the main pillars of his design theory in the 1960s.
From today's perspective, product design in particular is becoming a formally oriented consumer entertainment program on the stage of countless 3D printers, thanks to digital production possibilities. These, in turn, are drudging up to capture the highly specific life models of a new caste of service universalists in products. Their energy-intensive, densely packed and event-oriented lifestyle does not need medieval beak masks to drive away the plague, but in their digital communities they rely on the modern heavy oil Exxon-Valdez version of the Black Death. Therefore here is a word-for-word Dieter-Rams ship of the Bottsand class, which, if used correctly, could provide more clarity in the economic oil spill.
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 durable.
Good design is consistent down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Even if he relates these theses to his product design world, many everyday objects in the current Web 4.0 world have long since mutated into suppliers of a supply chain for data highways. So it is necessary to apply this Rams "rhombus rescue handle" more generally in order to be able to judge the skidding course of our value system from a stable lateral position.
Merciful state
Seen from this position, our apparently so correct world shows itself in a pitiful state. The currently still most powerful man in the world exercises himself in a hitherto unknown unpredictability of a blond political wrestler, whose permanent over-selling separates rather tragically entertainingly than connects. He too, it seems to me, needs a brown reset button marked in colour. But this makes him just one of many representatives of a protectionist attitude that oscillates between collective euphoria and private romanticism.
Think of the strange combination of the presidential proclamation "America First" and the mirrored Trump Trutzburg in Manhattan (725 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10022), in which the family is spoiled in a media-effective way on velvet-soft giant cushions and a clear view of ornamentally framed ceiling frescos.
But anyone who now thinks he can pop the USA bashing corks is pointing the Veuve Cliquot luxury bottle straight at his own eye. Our European federalism is no better off: it is hurtling through an avenue of ego-drenched populist tree giants and would need a kind of Dieter Rams guardrail like the A-class, an electronic stability program.
But let's get back to design: unfortunately, designers and communication specialists usually answer many pressing questions with purely marketing-driven tools. This is probably the result of a lifelong influence, which sees perfection in a well-behaved increase in ratings. The strategy succeeds brilliantly in the economic dimension, but fails miserably when it comes to promising content.
Standard for European entertainment
An example of this failure and at the same time a bizarre yet relevant coincidence: 1956 - Rams began with Braun in the same year that Marcel Bezençon launched the Eurovision Song Contest. Rams invented a global design language that is still relevant today with the attempt to implement a product ethic, while Bezençon invented the first pan-European event format that achieved economic recognition through endless institutional broadcasting power. In the case of the Eurovision Song Contest, this became one of the most important collective and media-experienceable EU music experiences. Tragically, however, it also set a standard for European entertainment in which the hope for relevant content was similar to the search for climbable eight-thousand-metre peaks in the Wadden Sea.
Nevertheless - somehow admirable, because even today, when you look at German quota lighthouses such as the Summer Festival of Folk Music and the associated rapturously billowing groupie conglomerate, you ask yourself how a European component is and was conceivable in the context of such nationally oriented music events.
The quota fetishism of the media industry
Here, deep in the German mud of the media mudflats on the Teutonic screens, among others the male Funkenmariechen Florian Silbereisen throws perfectly opportunistic sound and event brekkies into the audience and proves to be a masterful arranger of a questionable nationally influenced musical lobotomy. Bezençon's idea of a European media product is much more interesting. But there is one flaw inherent in the system: the media industry's quota fetishism.
Content, as edgy and independent as a phono-radio combination SK55 by Rams, disappears in this populist-oriented media opinion-forming model in a poison cabinet of late night and early bird formats. The prime-time ratings head jelly is flanked by a no less flabby design dimension. In the case of the European Song Contest, the central motifs of the respective year attempt to communicate at least rudimentary content: in 2017, these were visually transposed elements from a traditional Ukrainian necklace - understandable, unobtrusive, honest - here even some of the Rams agenda is flashing up. If, on the other hand, one looks at the overall appearance, the corporate design elements of the overall event and the individual stage appearances of the countries, the design target group orientation is similar to a transfer to the associative Guantanamo.
Political and creative dimension
Entirely in the sense of stringent marketing considerations and in an almost obscene manner, a creative opportunity is being lived out here, the result of which is a distorted image of a European profile that is no longer recognisable to many people. Seen in this light, even profane communication formats such as ESC can trigger a special kind of sensitive (European) epilepsy, of which Playstation warns us every time it is restarted. Therefore, in relation to the perception of Europe at the ESC, one can speak of a political and creative dimension and the way the appearance is now, unfortunately.
So let's dive deeper into this pan-European competitive spectacle of visual experience dimensions. First dive and often underestimated focal point of identity is the logo, a kind of representative of values in super-compact format. In our ESC case it seems to have escaped a dynamic-serially guided Magic-Marker hand in the basement of a large agency. Dressed in a politically correct way, the logo places the respective country in the heart of the lettering. The fact that the second line "Song Contest" was originally designed in a brutalist typeface is partly due to the name of the font - it's the "Eurostyle" developed around 1960 by Aldo Novarese - but is also certainly historically based. For in 1957 there was also the first addition to the European Federation: the EEC. This was an uncomfortable decision in terms of design, because the letters had the elegance and power of a concrete mixer. Since 2017 this typeface has unfortunately been replaced.
Beyond the formal discussion about the logo and key visual, the design meltdown of the ESC begins with the apparently specific visual country appearances. Willingly or unwillingly, a kind of corporate stage design tries to create a European order in this tohowabohu.
ESC aberrations
Over the years, this unspeakable event set has developed into a Frankensteinesque event, in which archetypes of the simplest design on a streamlined stage take the reins: The insane fiddler, for example, who, whether on viola, violin or cello, wants to challenge the handsaw world record of Dirk Braun with his bow. The dark-haired Lord of the Rings ice princess with a geek-style tattoo, Wolpertinger girls from Romantic Fairy and Lara Croft egoshooter or a politically apparently correct Pocahontas construct are sometimes entertaining to look at, but anything but interesting. The digital mapping and pyrotechnical stun grenades ignited for this purpose, in harmony with the contourless entertainment from derivatives, give an inkling of an unconditional will for media impact, which gives almost every non-conformism or creative idealism a right Mike Tyson hook with subsequent knockout. To quote Adorno freely: this is a special medial form of "delusional connection".
In 2017 funny wobbling VW Bullis, Led masks, historical cannons and many seemingly meaningless things lined up on stage in such a way that at least in my case in the traffic jam of zero content an inevitable rear-end collision with a short-term entertainment-skull-brain-trauma followed. My home TV has more and more diagonal and black, but still no sense ABS or headbanging airbag. Nevertheless, it is pointless to list all these ESC aberrations further, because they are spread over us every day by many media formats. What interests me more is that the creative ESC winner mechanism 2017 has obviously not quite worked.
Unrelenting Italians and Portuguese, otherwise known for light Ramazotti muse and fado despair, have challenged this European mega-event this year with very different strategies
The Italian contribution has already been much discussed by insiders. Perhaps for this very reason, it defines a successful possibility in the environment of social media discourse to strike an individual, subversive and ironic hook in an overpowering industrial-design-media complex. Critical content with party option and holiday feeling - this was last seen on a national level with "Geiersturzflug" and "Brottosozialprodukt". As much as I personally find the positive evaluation difficult, we are dealing with a strategy that achieves more than conservative thinking would like to admit. I will try to translate the Italian content pearl of the light muse of Francesco Gabbani:
Title: Occidentali's Karma
Text: To be or must be, Hamlet's doubts, as present as in Neolithic man / make yourself comfortable in your 2 x 3 meter cage: intellectuals in the cafes, internet believers / honorary members in the group of anonymous selfie addicts / intelligence has gone out of fashion / simple answers / useless quandaries The crowd shouts its mantra, evolution stumbles / the naked monkey dances / it rains drops from Chanel on aseptic bodies / save yourself from the smell of your fellow human beings / all the smartwads on the web / cocaine for the people / opium for the poor / virtual humanity is sought.
If one considers the attempts to interpret "Occidentalis Karma" in the post-ESC-phase, which are still ongoing in the most diverse social strata and the research on terms such as Karma, Panta Rei, Hamlet etc. initiated by this, an interesting variant of the so often quoted educational mission of the public broadcaster seems to me to have succeeded here, involuntarily indeed, but on a European level.
In terms of content, Salvador Sobral's Portuguese contribution cannot compete with this, but it too marks a media crossroads that displaces the effect in favour of a presence on a European stage that is as simple as possible. Sobral is a soft indicator of a mass media communication that no longer follows any kind of marketing archetype, but defines a new form of shizophrenia in a positive way: individualism suitable for the masses.
And what do the Gabbani and Sobrals swimming in the pond of the light muse have to do with a creative heavyweight like Rams?
All three define different strategies of a social search for a collective ergonomics of understanding. Rams as the sublime classic icon of a reduced and clear product world, Gabbani and Sobral as short-lived formats of an ever faster spinning media world. Which brings us back to scraping along the boundaries of critical theory: Here, admittedly weighted very differently, an overpowering mythology, which defines itself through positivistic quota loyalty and sales figures, is confronted with an individual consciousness-forming position. The individual does not become an annulated protagonist, but rather options are opened up for him outside of the ergonomic or entertaining totality.
The crowd shouts its mantra, evolution stumbles, the naked monkey dances, it's really time for a new "less is more".