Dieter Rams vs Jony Ive: Ten Principles of Good Design and Their Best-Known Heir
Comparing Dieter Rams's ten principles of good design at Braun with Jony Ive's design leadership at Apple: what Ive has said he learned from Rams, where the two differ, and what designers can take from each.
Design writing keeps drawing a line from Dieter Rams, the German designer behind Braun's functional, quiet products, to Jony Ive, who led design at Apple. People compare them because Ive has publicly acknowledged Rams, and because the comparison raises a question: what happens to a philosophy of restraint when it meets the scale of modern consumer technology?
What is the core difference?
Rams articulated a philosophy: design should make products useful, understandable, honest, long-lasting, and unobtrusive, and should use as little design as possible. His work at Braun and with the furniture company Vitsoe shows the philosophy in objects.
Ive led the design of products in which hardware, materials, and software are developed together, and which became cultural objects. His work shows what restraint looks like when applied to complex computers and phones at huge scale.
One states principles for objects. The other applies a sensibility to systems that millions use daily.
What does Rams say?
Dieter Rams joined Braun in 1955 and led its design department from 1961 to 1995. His products, such as the SK 4 record player and the T3 pocket radio, became design classics. Alongside Vitsoe he designed the 606 Universal Shelving System. His ten principles of good design were developed in the 1970s and remain widely cited.
In later years he has spoken about his concern for the environment and the volume of objects in the world, and has argued for less but better. Sources include interviews, the book Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible by Sophie Lovell (2011), and Gary Hustwit's 2018 documentary Rams.
What does Ive say?
Jony Ive, a British designer, joined Apple in 1992 and became chief design officer. He led design on products including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple's emphasis on simplicity, materials, and attention to detail under his leadership is widely discussed. He left Apple in 2019 to found the design firm LoveFrom.
He has described admiring Rams and wrote the foreword to Lovell's book on him. His own statements about design appear in interviews and talks. Because Apple is a company, the products reflect many contributors and commercial constraints.
How do they compare?
| Dimension | Ive | Rams |
|---|---|---|
| Context | Apple, consumer technology at global scale | Braun and Vitsoe, mid-century German manufacturing |
| Time | 1990s to 2019 at Apple, then LoveFrom | 1955 to 1995 at Braun |
| Products | iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad | Radios, record players, shavers, shelving |
| Philosophy | Simplicity, care, and attention to materials and detail | Ten principles; less but better |
| Medium | Hardware and software designed together | Mostly physical products |
| Main tension | Restraint versus the scale and consumption of the products | The limits of a single designer's principles |
| Best-known documents | Interviews and the foreword to Lovell's book | The ten principles; Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible |
When does each one fit?
Rams's principles fit as a checklist for any product or interface: is it understandable, honest, unobtrusive, and thorough? They are particularly useful as a corrective when a design has grown by accumulation.
Ive's example fits when you want to study how a company can make design the center of product development, with obsession over materials and details and close collaboration between design and engineering.
The principles do not guarantee good design. They guide judgment, and they have to be balanced against the needs and constraints of a particular project.
What does this look like in practice?
A team redesigns an app that has accumulated features. A Rams-style audit asks of every element whether it is useful, understandable, honest, and necessary. It prompts removals: buttons that duplicate others, labels that need explaining, decorative elements that add nothing.
An Ive-style reading looks at the experience as a whole: the feel of the interaction, the consistency of details, and the way hardware, software, and packaging reinforce one another. It prompts attention to craft at every level. The first reduces; the second integrates and polishes.
"Here is a product or interface I am designing: [describe]. Evaluate it against Rams's ten principles, noting for each whether it passes, fails, or is unclear. Then suggest the three things I could remove to move toward as little design as possible. Finally, from an Ive-like attention to detail, list three details in the experience that deserve more care."
Why it works: the principles give a structured critique, and the detail pass checks that restraint has not become neglect.
Can you use both together?
Yes. Rams supplies the principles and Ive an example of applying a sensibility at scale. They are best used as references, not rules.
Be careful with the lineage story. Apple's design was the work of a team, and Rams's principles were his own. The comparison is useful for what each shows, and less so as a claim of descent.
"For my project [describe], list the cases where adding something would serve users better than removing it, and say which of Rams's principles would argue against it. Then tell me what evidence from users would decide the matter."
Why it works: testing the principle against real cases keeps restraint from becoming dogma.
Where to go next
Dieter Rams and Jony Ive both sit in the Architect & Designer category. For the originals, see Sophie Lovell's Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible, with Ive's foreword, and Gary Hustwit's documentary Rams. To critique a landing page against what its traffic came for, Landing Page Teardown is a $79 tool built for it.
Frequently asked questions
What are Rams's ten principles?
They state that good design is innovative, makes a product useful, is aesthetic, makes a product understandable, is unobtrusive, is honest, is long-lasting, is thorough down to the last detail, is environmentally friendly, and is as little design as possible. Rams formulated them while working at Braun as a way to articulate his approach. Related to them is his motto, less but better.
Has Ive acknowledged Rams's influence?
Yes. Ive has spoken admiringly of Rams's work for years, and wrote the foreword to Sophie Lovell's book Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible (2011). Commentators have also pointed to visual similarities between Braun products and Apple's. Influence in this comparison means what Ive has said and written, not claims about copying, which is a separate question. Reading the foreword itself gives the clearest sense of what Ive says he admired.
What did Rams think of Apple?
In interviews Rams has expressed admiration for Apple's design, and has said that few companies follow his principles as consistently. He has also raised concerns about consumption and the amount of stuff in the world, and has criticized disposability. His views are on record in interviews and in the 2018 documentary Rams, and are not a blanket endorsement. His criticisms are as important as his praise, since he has argued that good design should also reduce waste.
How do their working contexts differ?
Rams worked at Braun, a German consumer-electronics company, from 1955, leading design from 1961 to 1995, with products such as radios, record players, and shavers. Ive led design at Apple until 2019, shaping products used by hundreds of millions of people, with software and hardware designed together. The scale, technology, and business models are very different. Both are better read through their own documents than through summaries that compress decades of work.
Is as little design as possible always right?
It is a principle for a certain kind of design, not a universal law. Rams's restraint fits tools and domestic products meant to recede. Other contexts, such as expressive or ornamental design, serve other purposes. Even within Rams's world, the principle is paired with usefulness and understanding. It is a position to weigh against the needs of the project. A good check is to ask what a feature adds for the user and what it costs in clarity.
Can AI help me apply these principles?
It can help you audit a design against the ten principles, list what could be removed, and compare options. It cannot judge taste or how a product feels in the hand. Use it to structure critique, and rely on prototypes and people for the actual judgment. Treat its critique as a prompt, and then test the design with real users.
Written by Gareth Hoyle. Last updated 8 October 2026. Part of the authority.md guides library.
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