Dezeen Magazine

Competition: five copies of Less and More to be won

Dezeen and publisher Gestalten have got together to offer readers the chance to win one of five copies of Less and More: the Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, published in conjunction with the current exhibition of the same name at the Design Museum, London.

Edited by professor Klaus Klemp and curator Keiko Ueki-Polet, the book contains hundreds of sketches and photographs of designs by Rams for electronics manufacturer Braun, furniture brand Vitsoe and his own design company sdr+.

The book also features new accompanying texts explaining the formation of the work and its sustained relevance.

Listen to our recent podcast with Dieter Rams for the Design Museum here.

This competition is now closed.

Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

Here's more info from Gestalten:

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Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams
Edited by Klaus Klemp, Keiko Ueki-Polet

In the more than 40 years that he spent working at Braun, Dieter Rams established himself as one of the most influential designers of the twentieth century. His elegantly clear visual language not only defined product design for decades, but also our fundamental understanding of what design is and what it can and should do.

Dieter Rams created ten rules of design more than twenty years ago. Sometimes referred to as “the ten commandments,” they are just as relevant today: Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps a product to be understood. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consistent to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible.

Less and More elucidates the design philosophy of Dieter Rams. The book contains images of hundreds of Rams’s products as well as his sketches and models from Braun stereo systems and electric shavers to the chairs and shelving systems that he created for Vitsoe and his own company sdr+. In addition to the rich visual presentation of his designs, the book contains new texts by international design experts that explain how the work was created, describe its timeless quality, and put it into current context. In this way, the work of Dieter Rams is given a contemporary re-evaluation that is especially useful in light of the rediscovery of functionalism and rationalism in today’s design.

Less and More shows us the possibilities that design opens for both the manufacturer and the consumer as a means of making our lives better through attractive, functional solutions that also save resources.

Less and More is edited by Professor Klaus Klemp and Keiko Ueki-Polet. One of the world’s leading experts in the field of product design, Klemp has been acquainted with Dieter Rams for many years and is an authority on his work. Ueki-Polet is one of Japan’s most renowned design curators. She is well acquainted with design developments in both Asia and the Western world and works at the Suntory Museum in Osaka.

The Less and More book has been published in conjunction with the Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams exhibition at the London Design Museum, which is on show from November 18, 2009 to March 7, 2010. The exhibition will travel further to the Frankfurt Museum for Applied Art from May 22 to Settember 5, 2010.

Book Information:

Title: Less and More
Subtitle: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams
Editors: Klaus Klemp, Keiko Ueki-Polet

European Release: December 15, 2009
International Release: January 2010
Language: bilingual German/English

Format: 19 x 23 cm
Features: 808 pages, full color, PVC cover, in slipcase
ISBN: 978-3-89955-277-5

You can view a selection of double-page spreads from the book on the website.

About Gestalten

Gestalten specializes in developing content for aficionados of cutting-edge visual culture worldwide. The company is best known for the more than two hundred fifty books we have published that document and anticipate vital design movements for our own title list as well as customer publishing projects. Gestalten is firmly committed to identifying the zeitgeist of contemporary visual culture. We are constantly exploring all areas of creativity to examine currents in visual codes from graphic design and illustration to photography, furniture design, interiors, architecture and contemporary art.

Congratulations to the winners! Man Kit Au-Yeung in the UK, Vladimir Konjevic in Serbia, Thomas Bildsře in Denmark, Tyler Loewen in Canada and Alexandre Kuroda in Brasil.