Evrim Tekin

Design

Design is how it works, then how it looks.

What it is

Design spans buildings, images, products and interfaces. Its job is to make something understandable and usable before making it beautiful, and good design often disappears because nothing gets in the way.

Dieter Rams summarised a working philosophy in ten principles, ending with “good design is as little design as possible”. This site tries to follow it: quiet surfaces, one idea per screen, motion only where it explains something.

Updated 5 November 2026 · 2 sourced facts

Conceptual diagram

Dieter Rams’s ten principles of good design

A compact, widely used definition of good design.

Source: Vitsœ

A diagram of ideas, not a measurement.

Ideas to carry

  1. 1

    Form follows function

    Start from what the thing must do, and let the shape come from that.

  2. 2

    Things should explain themselves

    A handle says pull; a flat plate says push.

  3. 3

    Less, but better

    Remove until only what matters is left.

Established What we know

  1. Dieter Rams’s ten principles of good design end with “good design is as little design as possible”.[1]
  2. Philosophers have debated since Plato whether beauty is a property of objects or of the experience of them.[2]

Interpretation The older lens · Classical architecture

Vitruvius asked every building for firmness, commodity and delight; temple builders tuned proportions to sacred ratios.

Reading

  1. c. 15 BCEDe architecturaVitruvius
  2. 1977A Pattern LanguageChristopher Alexander
  3. 1988The Design of Everyday ThingsDon Norman

Door with a handle

Sign on the door: PUSH 🙃

Made in-house, for fun.

Connected subjects, projects and writing

Sources

  1. Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design Vitsœ. Checked 5 Nov 2026.
  2. The Concept of the Aesthetic Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Checked 5 Nov 2026.