Rams

Rams is a documentary about Dieter Rams, one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. The documentary was made by Gary Hustwit in 2018.

I won't say much about Rams: the film is very good and insightful, so my advice is to find some time to watch it.

Probably Rams is so famous today because his critiques to consumerism and industrial production have never been so actual. A call to produce "less but better" finds its space in a world where every person involved in the production, from design to selling, is asked to compromise quality to produce more.

We're forced by consumerism to create things that often are short-lived, defective, or even useless. Despite the evident problems that this way of producing comports, somehow seems the "only way" of working in many companies.

This is true not only for material goods: we see a lot of applications and websites that are made with bad design practices. We build a lot, we build for the short-term, we build without the users in mind. The result is to live buried by a lot of poor software that makes our days worse.

That's why I think the principles of Rams are so relevant today.

Documentary web page:
https://www.hustwit.com/rams

Watch it on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ramsfilm