Famed German industrial designer Dieter Rams’s work for Braun is being celebrated in a new London design exhibit called ‘Systems’.
It features 34 posters created from top design studios around the world that pay tribute to, and sometimes criticize, Rams’s brand of German Functionalism.
Each design studio took a different approach to distilling Rams’s design principles. Swedish design firm Lundgren+Lindqvist uses pixels to represent his methodology, while Tom Hingston Studio’s simple poster of an iconic Braun egg-beater covered with batter shows how it can still be beautiful.
Produced in collaboration with Peter Kapos, a specialist dealer at Braun, the exhibit includes classic Braun products from the 1960s on display alongside the posters. It is being held in the London showroom of European furniture company Walter Knoll.
Walter Knoll’s James Charles-Edwards says, “In the 1960s, the entire Braun program was a single system that informed the design of everything from the product, the packaging, the guarantee slips, and the brochures. What remains impressive today is the way that this great range of objects interlocked to produce a single coherent program.”
While most of the designs celebrate the brilliance of Rams, some recognize that his unbending approach to industrial design has not always led to logical results, while others remark that present-day Braun products have moved away from their utilitarian purposes to become decorative objects.
While acknowledging his shortcomings, Charles-Edwards points out that companies like Apple owe a debt to Rams, whose influence can be seen in their highly-stylized product lines.
‘Systems’ runs from now til 31 December 2013. The posters are available for purchase as limited edition prints here.
[via Fast Company, images via Das Programm]