Good design is innovative, useful, aesthetic, honest, and understandable. It is also unobtrusive, thorough, and “as little design as possible.” These principles sound twenty-first century. And they are. But they were articulated by a man who began his career in 1957, Dieter Rams. A visionary German designer, Rams may be best known for his elegant and minimal products such as the Braun Juicer, a revelation in 1972. His 1959 TP1 Radio/phono combination is eerily similar to the first ...
Birch trees swayed in the gentle breeze, casting long shadows on the colorful wooden houses that were coming to life after a long, cold winter. Earlier, we had dug up trash from a dump by the pond and buried it in the sandpile by Igor’s dacha. Then we lit a fire in a rusty barrel and melted old plastic toys—typical pastimes for kids with too much free time on their hands in rural Russia. Earlier, we had played dodgeball on the beat-up road, and now we were looking for a way to retrieve the ...