Essential | Dieter Rams for Braun

Dieter Rams is a living legend. As Braun's head designer for almost 35 years, he defined what simple, functional products should look like--in fact, if you own anything by Apple, you've got Dieter Rams to thank, because their products are basically a long-running homage to Rams's designs from the 1960s.

Among designers, Rams is famous for his 10 Principles of Good Design, which he wrote in the early 1980s, as a kind of summary to an entire life spent in design. #1: Good design makes a product useful. #9: Good design is concerned with the environment. #10: Good design is as little design as possible. The list has never really been topped, and today's designers still live with those tenets.