In 2007, the American documentary maker Gary
Hustwit released Helvetica, a film about a font. Rather
remarkably, it went on to play in more than 300 cities
in 40 countries and was shown on BBC, PBS and
Netflix. He followed it two years later with Objectified,
a film about design, which featured a rare onscreen
interview with the German industrial designer
Dieter Rams, as well as younger designers Erwan and
Ronan Bouroullec, Marc Newson and Hella Jongerius.
Urbanized followed in 2011.
It was a creative run that put Hustwit in an enviable
position. He could make his next project about almost
anything he wanted. But instead of choosing a perhaps
safer, broader topic, he returned to Rams: ‘Like
my other documentaries, Rams was a film that I just
wanted to watch and couldn’t believe didn’t already
exist,’ says Hustwit. ‘I think he has some amazing
insights into digital technology and how it’s impacted
society, perhaps because he chooses to reject it. But he
recognises that this dramatic change in human
behaviour is in some ways a result of his work.’
The pair had got on while filming Objectified, and
Hustwit felt there was a connection there. ‘Dieter
is notoriously private and doesn’t have a lot of patience
doing interviews,’ he says. ‘I think at some point three
years ago it became clear that I was probably the
only person he’d allow to make a film about him, and
then I felt the pressure – like if I didn’t commit to
doing it, there wouldn’t be a film about Dieter Rams.’
Hustwit took his time making the documentary.
‘I don’t really have a strategy when I’m starting
my films. A lot of the process is just digging into the
subject matter and trying to get a sense of how it can
be presented cinematically. And for me, that takes
time. Sometimes I fantasise that if I had a huge budget
and staff and a major broadcaster footing the bill, I could
finish a film like this in six months, but it wouldn’t be
the same. Part of the reason my films are what they are is
because of the time it takes to fund them independently.’
Over the course of three years, Hustwit interviewed
Rams at home, at the Vitsœ factory, which produces
Rams’ furniture, in Leamington Spa, at the Vitsœ
shop in London, and at Rams’ 85th birthday party
in Frankfurt. Sometimes he worked alone, sometimes
with a sound man and cameraman. Occasionally I went
along too, interviewing Rams off camera in German
so he could answer more freely in his native tongue.I first met Rams in 2007. He had accepted the invitation
to become one of Wallpaper’s inaugural guest editors
(alongside Jeff Koons and Hedi Slimane) and I visited
his self-designed house near Frankfurt to interview him
(W*103). Rams seems to have been happy with what
I wrote because a year later, publisher Phaidon contacted
me. It had just signed a monograph book deal with
Rams. ‘Dieter wants you to write it.’ How could I say no?
Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible was published
in 2011. It has a foreword by Apple design chief
Jony Ive. To my knowledge it was the only published
piece of writing by him, such is the level of respect
Rams has in the design community. Walter Isaacson’s
biography of Steve Jobs, published by Simon & Schuster
later that year, also references Rams several times,
and states that, from early on, Jobs wanted a ‘world-class
designer who would be for Apple what Dieter Rams
was for Braun’. With the success of Apple, design-driven
business developed a much broader level of interest.
Suddenly everybody wanted to know about this
‘designer’s designer’ who commanded such respect.
(You don’t have to look hard to see the influence of
Rams, and his ten principles for good design, on Apple’s
design thinking. The first iPod is a clear formal homage
to Braun’s T3 pocket radio, designed by Rams in 1958.)
Rams joined the German electronics company
Braun in 1955, was appointed head of design seven years
later, and stayed there for more than 40 years. Many
of the designs produced during his tenure – minimal,
elegant, useful – are now iconic. But his influence
runs deeper than simply producing a run of design’s
greatest hits. His work at Braun fundamentally shifted
ideas about what design was for, and how it had to be
integrated into every element of the business. And he
remains a touchstone for contemporary industrial
designers, his thinking perhaps more relevant than ever.
There is a modular aspect to all of his designs,
which are related aesthetically and in terms of intent
and functionality, as well as with the environment
they are intended to occupy, and the users they are
designed to serve. These principles still hold true. ‘What
we need today is a fundamental rethinking,’ says Rams
in a teaser trailer for Hustwit’s film. ‘Not just in
design, but in general. Back to basics. Less. And better.’
This is pretty much what he has been saying over
and over since the early 1970s. It is a message that he
has dedicated a great deal of his life to getting across. »A LIFE LESS
ORDINARY
For his latest documentary, Helvetica director Gary Hustwit has
turned his lens on reluctant design hero Dieter Rams. Sophie Lovell,
who interviewed Rams when he was one of our inaugural guest
editors in 2007 and participated in the film, picks up the thread
PHOTOGRAPHY: CAROLINE TOMPKINS136 ∑