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…

Here’s a list of web resolutions popular on mobile devices as of February 2011 presented by Uxbooth.com with their published article, Considerations for Mobile Web Design (Part 2): Dimensions, by David Leggett. The author explains a few points about display dimensions and solutions for layout design.

• The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.




• Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.




• Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

If the purpose of design is to help us solve a problem then the message helps us to understand what the problem is.

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.