Sunday, May 3, 2009

Star Trek & 1960s Design, 10: Hi-Fi

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"Good design is as little design as possible."
--from the 10 design commandments of Dieter Rams (famous German industrial designer, born 1932, links to Design Museum site)


Star Trek computer, far left, in the episode "Court Martial" (1967).

Dieter Rams designed this classic T1000 radio, near left, in 1962.
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I will spare you the entire history of stereo components (I had no idea this religion existed!); but this is so cool: Dieter Rams--the head of design for Braun--started using a black base (below, left) for hi-fi components in 1965, like the black base of the Star Trek bridge consoles.




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(Note also, there've been a lot of comparisons drawn in the last year or two between Rams's designs and those of Apple designer Jonathan Ive.)
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As always, Star Trek screencaps from TrekCore.com.

2 comments:

Clair said...

This reminds me of Beatrice Ward's comment on typography - made in the 1920s -- "good typography is invisible."

Fresca said...

That's good--thanks!
I might even say the same thing about writing:
good writing is invisible.
Of course, sometimes GREAT writing/design etc. shows itself in big blaring curlicues in the sky too! But mostly not.