Dieter Rams, who was featured in critically acclaimed documentary Objectified is one of the most influential design gurus in the world. He has created countless products for Braun, the German white goods company. And he is a man who has influenced Apple’s head of design, Jonathan Ive. Here’s a piece of what he wrote exclusively for the The Daily Telegraph about what makes Apple special:

“Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. Probably the first example was Peter Behrens and his work for the German company AEG, in the early part of the 20th century. He might be considered to be the founder of corporate identity. Adriano Olivetti was close behind as he transformed his father’s Italian company, Olivetti. Having become aware of this scarcity at the start of my career in the 1950s, I am sorry to report that the situation does not seem to have improved to this day.

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists – between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

I am always fascinated when I see the latest Apple products. Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them. For me, I had to queue to receive food at the end of World War II. That’s quite a change.

They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.”

Apple is probably the only tech company with a head of design. This makes them both a tech and an industrial design firm… And actually marketing can be added to the mix…

How often do you come across a t-shirt with nothing but words on it and yet everyone wants one? How important of a role does design play versus the actual message being delivered?

So many designers spend so much time trying to prettify everything without realizing why they are actually doing it? Are you really enhancing the message or are you simply putting lipstick on a pig?

Design encompasses a lot of individual components brought together to solve a problem. The message is simply one of those components, but without it the solution that the design is trying to offer can get lost.

• Illustrations
• Printed paper
• Realism
• Imageless & typography-focused
• Minimalism
• Vintage look
• Large images & photo backgrounds
• Rich & slick user interfaces

While many designers seem to be very against trends and already popular styles, one must understand that these certain styles are popular for a reason. That reason is that there is already something about them that works, whether it be efficiency, viewer-connection, or interesting visual appeal. The goal is to always view popular styles from an intuitive standpoint, and take from them what works best. This is the only way to learn and gain experience as a web designer, even when developing one’s own particular style.

A list of more resources about user personas and mental models are listed at the end of the post.

But seriously, we need more ponies on our websites ;-P

From the book The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

The challenge is to be of service without becoming servile. We shouldn’t elevate any customer to the role of superior being, but treat each with human respect.

The key to becoming a stellar service provider lies in making only responsible commitments. This requires not simply being knowledgeable about what must be done but “no-legible” about how preferences resolve into satisfying results. We must know how and when to say, “No,” because no one can know what will finally emerge as best. Client and designer will have to discover what constitutes best, and this always means stumbling through some uncomfortable territory together.

It’s crazy how much more satisfying to it is when you are able to present an even better solution to the problem they were really hoping for when they were offering suggestions or ideas.

Of course you’ve heard this Henry Ford quote a hundred times:
“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

Or Tom Kelley’s (IDEO’s general manager) translation of that:
“Customers don’t envision the future, they inform the present.”

1. When ignoring an experienced and talented designer, your organization will only waste more dollars “trying out” everyone’s ideas, testing what’s been tested, ad nauseum, etc. 
2. As far as handling feedback, I don’t think it’s the designer’s responsibility to manage feedback process. Typically, a designer is hit with competing and often conflicting feedback from every direction– an overwhelming experience that often includes a healthy dosage of office politicking. The design team manager (or any manager) should set rules for unsolicited feedback. I think designers should not be forced to balance conflicting executive feedback. 
3. Design input is always valuable and fresh eyes often can see overlooked design weaknesses, but a business/client should understand years of design experience is worth something. 
4. Being a good designer is not only a matter of creating great work, but being able to work with various stakeholders to successfully deliver the project.

I think rules #4 “Make your site’s goal obvious”, #5 “Navigation should be easy to figure out”, #7 “Don’t put animation in the way of your content” and #9 “Don’t have a splash/landing page” can be broken for personal portfolio or some entertainment sites, where a more creative approach might be appropriate, but not so much for e-commerce, news or corporate sites.

#6 “Use different colors for the text and background” should be “Use Contrast between Text and Background”, not different colors. Most of the examples here use variations of the base color, and use contrast to make the text readable, just like it supposed to be.

#8 “Stick to web-safe fonts”: I’m getting into using Cufon and Typeface.js (I used it for 2 projects), they offer a great solution in terms of progressive enhancement (better than sIFR), and think this is one area where the old rules no longer apply.

I also liked the tables joke and the tone it sets to encourage designers not to be so serious all the time!