Every object made by humans has a story to tell. There\u2019s the story of the people who made it, of the materials chosen, and the creative motivation. Only when you understand the story do you understand an object\u2019s meaning. Or so says Dieter Rams, who headed up product design at Braun from 1961 to 1995.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Braun: Designed to Keep<\/em><\/a> is the story of Braun. It\u2019s billed as \u201cthe most comprehensive history\u201d of the company to date. Telling it requires more than 400 pages and 500 images, including never-before-published archival materials and brand-new full-page photography of Braun\u2019s most iconic products, each instilled with Rams\u2019 \u201cless, but better\u201d approach that would directly influence designers like Naoto Fukasawa<\/a> and Apple\u2019s Jony Ive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What\u2019s most striking as I thumbed through an advanced copy is how desirable many of those early Braun products remain today, some of which were introduced almost 70 years ago. No surprise, I guess, given the disposable detritus you\u2019ll find on Amazon and AliExpress, places where product design prostrates itself to the gods of mass consumption and devices vary with flourishes of useless decoration usually reserved for the Walmart cereal aisle.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mean, just look at the TP1 (1959) in the image below, the portable predecessor to the Walkman that worked as a radio and also played records from the bottom like a Miniot turntable<\/a>, and the T3 transistor radio (1958) that certainly provided Ive with some inspiration for the iPod\u2019s click wheel interface<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by a table fan? Just look at the HL1, which first made its appearance in 1961:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Braun really excelled at Hi-Fi, and this wall unit designed in the mid-1960s was what space-age living was all about:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Braun: Designed to Keep <\/em>is published by Phaidon and written by Professor Klaus Klemp, the German design historian and curator who has spent the last two decades carefully documenting the work of Dieter Rams through major exhibitions and books like Dieter Rams: The Complete Works<\/em>. If a group of experts has gathered somewhere on the globe to discuss the legacy of Braun or Rams, you can bet that Klemp was invited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another thing I really enjoyed while flipping through it was noting the size and placement of the Braun logo \u2014 first introduced with the raised \u201cA\u201d in 1935. In Rams<\/em>, the excellent 2018 documentary directed by Gary Hustwit (which also features Klemp), the acclaimed designer, then on the cusp of his 86th birthday (now 91), says he always wanted the Braun logo to be small and unobtrusive \u2014 a battle he fought with at least 10 CEOs, by his account, all of whom wanted the wordmark printed loudly on every Braun product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re new someplace and you have to introduce yourself, or enter a room and say \u2018I\u2019m so and so,\u2019 you don\u2019t shout. You should do it quietly,\u201d said Rams in Rams<\/em>. \u201cIf every product shouts \u2018I am Braun!\u2019 it will get irritating.\u201d This makes sense when you understand Rams\u2019 dedication to the creation of a common design language during his four decades at the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In addition to endless gadget porn, the book also aims to correct a few things about Braun design for the historical record \u2014 namely, that Rams had help. That\u2019s not a controversial position. Although Rams\u2019 identity is so intertwined with the company that he\u2019s been mistakenly (or jokingly) called Mr. Braun at times, he\u2019s the first person to remind people that executing the company\u2019s design strategy was always a team effort. Designed to Keep<\/em> attempts to set the record straight by giving credit where credit is due.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The vast majority of the book deals with the Braun we celebrate, not tolerate, with plenty of history to reference anytime you want to better understand how the company\u2019s thinking evolved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Braun:<\/em> Designed to Keep<\/em> starts after World War I, when Max Braun founded the company in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1921, just as Bauhaus design \u2014 and its emphasis on function \u2014 was taking root and Braun was making radios and phonographs. Braun\u2019s sons joined the company in 1945 after World War II. Artur Braun was a talented engineer and provided input on the S50 electric dry shaver. It launched in 1950 and quickly became the company\u2019s most profitable product, lifting Braun as a symbol of post-war reconstruction and expansion efforts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it was his brother, Erwin Braun, who, in the 1950s, began gathering a group of colleagues to produce appliances \u201cin the style of our times,\u201d says Klemp. Lacking the skills himself, Erwin entered into a very successful commercial partnership with the Hochschule f\u00fcr Gestaltung (HfG) Ulm between 1956 and 1963. Otl Aicher, an Ulm school founder, and Hans Gugelot, who taught product design there, were key partners who \u201cwithout a doubt greatly influenced the design mindset at Braun in the mid-1950s,\u201d says Klemp. Rams joined Braun on July 15th, 1955, as an interior designer, before rising to lead Braun\u2019s first internal design team in 1961, with Reinhold Weiss as his deputy. But according to Artur, his brother Erwin was \u201cthe true father of Braun Design.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Credit can also be seen on every product photograph, which includes a caption naming the original designer and the date it was first produced. Spoiler: not every famous Braun design is a Dieter Rams design. The book ends with 60 biographies in a section titled \u201cDesign is made by people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The book is laid out chronologically, but the full-page photography (and the author) encourages the reader to flip around casually, bouncing between products and the profiles of each designer and then their influences throughout the company\u2019s 102-year history. Navigation gets an assist with a comprehensive index that also identifies which pages have illustrations, alongside a glossary that helps readers make sense of Braun\u2019s cryptic product names.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fittingly, Rams\u2019 \u201cTen Principles of Good Design\u201d \u2014 first articulated in 1985 and steeped in Bauhaus traditions later refined by the Ulm school\u2019s understanding of technology and industrial production \u2014 fall almost exactly halfway into the book. Whether it was the author\u2019s intent, it neatly divides the history of Braun along a clear demarcation of before and after Dieter Rams. Perhaps his single most influential and well-known principle is number 10:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better \u2014 because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n In 1995, Dieter Rams was pushed out of his design leadership role by a manager from Gillette \u2014 which had purchased Braun in 1967 \u2014 who demanded more \u201cemotionalization\u201d from the product portfolio, according to Klemp. Rams was just two years away from retirement and given an elaborate yet meaningless (he had no direct reports) new title of executive director of corporate identity. He left Braun in 1997, just as Braun\u2019s \u201cless, but better\u201d ethos morphed into \u201cmore, and worse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While the house of Braun gave birth to Rams\u2019 10 design principles, it was Apple, and more specifically Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, who fully embraced them from the mid-1990s onward, starting with the iMac (1998), iPod (2001), and yes, the iPhone (2007), which was a marvel of simplicity and usability at launch. In 2009, Rams said, \u201cToday you find only a few companies that take design seriously, as I see it, and, at the moment that is an American company. It is Apple.\u201d Notably, he did not say Braun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just 41 pages of Braun: Designed to Keep<\/em> are, understandably, dedicated to the Braun of today. After all, it wasn\u2019t until 2010 that Procter & Gamble \u2014 which purchased Gillette in 2005 and had witnessed Apple\u2019s extraordinary global success \u2014 reverted to a \u201cPast Forward\u201d embrace of Braun\u2019s own design legacy. Klemp says that 2012\u2019s Braun Series 5 shavers were one of the first products to embody this reinterpretation. Which, well, fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This shaver from 2020 does seem to hew closely to early Braun designs:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Designed to Keep<\/em> makes a valiant effort to chronicle the Braun of today, covering mistakes and setbacks and, more recently, reinventions, while suggesting it could again influence an industry with its innovations. Maybe, but the book\u2019s appeal is unquestionably in looking backward, and there are benefits in doing that for Braun and the entire consumer electronics industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNew design always stands on the shoulders of its predecessors and, in the best cases, learns not only from insights gleaned during the creative process but also from the wrong turns taken,\u201d contends Klemp. \u201cOnly Gods can perform \u2018creation ex nihilo,\u2019 or produce something from nothing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Designed to Keep<\/em> gives meaning to the story of Braun by showing how generations of people drew inspiration from both past and current events to create products with sustained appeal. Such longevity is unheard of today, with fashionable design trends conspiring with software and electronics on a fast track to product obsolescence, planned or not. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The title <\/em>\u2014 Designed to Keep<\/em> \u2014 can also be read as an instruction. It\u2019s a book you\u2019ll want to keep around as a reference for the next time a new product launches and you think, \u201cNow where have I seen that before?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Braun: Designed to Keep<\/em> is available to purchase now for $79.95 \/\u20ac69.95<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n