1

Erik,

Yeah, I agree, the Akzi­denz Grotesk font is way cooler!

Jason (ex Meta 1998 – 2000)

Jason Fields
August 6th, 2007 at 20:47 pm

2

At least Apple steals from a good source. This has indi­rect ben­e­fits for Microsoft since they steal from Apple…

Patrick Au-Yeung
August 7th, 2007 at 07:38 am

3

It’s also sug­gested that Apple is inspired by Audi:

http://www.conceptcar.co.uk/news/cardesignnews.php?newsid=84

mattus
August 13th, 2007 at 13:22 pm

4

Agreed on the Braun influ­ence, but it’s not really steal­ing since they released an Apple branded Braun ET33/ET88:

http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/various/Braun.html

Ben
August 20th, 2007 at 23:09 pm

5

It’s the basic prin­ci­ple of ‘form fol­lows func­tion.’ I think, the issue is less copy­ing, as hav­ing the same, great design sen­si­bil­ity incor­po­rat­ing use and materials.

As a kid in Ger­many, I used to long­ingly look at the for me unaf­ford­able prod­ucts from Braun. This same design sense became imme­di­ately obvi­ous with the intro­duc­tion of the TI Book. It is great to see that at least some com­pa­nies sus­tain this sen­si­bil­ity, and do no just make ID changes for the sake of fash­ion or change.

Harald Striepe
August 20th, 2007 at 23:53 pm

6

Nah.

Apple vs 2384729384729 cal­cu­la­tor models.

There are so many per­mu­ta­tions of calculator’s design, that what­ever you come up with, you can be sure to find a look-alike.

kL
August 20th, 2007 at 23:54 pm

7

I can’t see that per­fo­rated alu­minium was exclu­sively a Braun design. Surely it’s a log­i­cal design for devices that need shell strength plus ven­ti­la­tion for air or sound. I’ve seen it on many devices over the years, but that doesn’t mean Apple ‘stole’ the con­cept from shavers, radios, tele­vi­sion speaker pan­els or other sources.

GaryP
August 21st, 2007 at 02:52 am

8

Check out Rebraun

Kevin Coffey
August 21st, 2007 at 10:57 am

9

And the Braun design­ers took from the Bauhaus design­ers (or were them) and the Bauhaus design­ers took from the Con­struc­tivists (or drank with them), etc.

Joe
August 21st, 2007 at 20:13 pm

10

The Boston Depart­ment of Traf­fic built the bus lines on the Colonists car­riage paths, who fol­lowed the set­tlers foot­paths, who fol­lowed the Native Amer­i­can foot­paths, who fol­lowed the buf­falo graz­ing paths, who fol­lowed the tall cool grass, which fol­lowed the shade and water, which fol­lowed the ele­ments falling from space onto the newly formed earth, which fol­lowed the big bang, which fol­lowed a pre­vi­ous great soci­ety called the “Mem­o­zahns” that had 8 dig­its and thus counted by hex­idec­i­mal val­ues nat­u­rally and thus quickly invented the Mem­o­zahn ver­sion of the iPhone, which ws based on the design of the Gahn­zad Num­bru­la­zor, which was based on the Hrod­zot­ian Boogahlard, which was based…

GJ Nelson
September 5th, 2007 at 17:54 pm

11

We actu­ally just had an alum guest lec­ture about the design of many of the iPhone & dash­board com­po­nents, and how he wanted to make them have a sense of phys­i­cal­ity. He talked specif­i­cally about dashboard’s cal­cu­la­tor, but I think he also designed the one for the iPhone. It’s inter­est­ing because a lot of the ID pro­fes­sors at CMU talk about clas­sic design from places such as Braun. I would have loved to have asked him about this, too bad I hadn’t read this entry!

Austin
September 10th, 2007 at 17:44 pm

12

Dear Mr. Spiekermann,

the Apple vs. Braun topic has been risen sev­eral times before. What do you think, how many times lay­outs were done the same way you did but just before you did.?

In my opin­ion Dieter Rams tried to design prod­ucts as easy, as sus­tain­able and as func­tional as pos­si­ble. He was a true mas­ter in that. And because he was, of course he did and will serve as an inspi­ra­tion to many design­ers. So for Jonathan Ive, who said so him­self in interviews.

We should be happy that a major com­pany is keep­ing alive the propo­si­tions about design by Dieter Rams and makes prod­ucts which are easy and enjoyable.

the 10 design propo­si­tions by Dieter Rams:
http://www.sdr-plus.com/20.0.html?&L=1

Since you didn’t take a clear stand in your post about your feel­ings towards the sim­i­lar­ity, I would be very inter­ested in your opin­ion about establi­hed design patterns.

Best Regards,
Arty Snow

Arty Snow
September 16th, 2007 at 17:32 pm

14

The G5 design is amazing.

thx a lot

vinya
March 12th, 2008 at 07:05 am

15

[…] Rams and Jonathan Ive’s Design for Apple has been men­tioned before, also in the Spiekerblog: Braun Apple Braun T1000, designer Dieter Rams — Cold War Mod­ern from Vic­to­ria & Albert Museum […]

SpiekerBlog » Blog Archive » Dieter Rams
December 12th, 2008 at 00:13 am

16

cool pic­sxx

Duzan
August 25th, 2010 at 13:15 pm