Inside the Definitive Guide to Braun Design

The German electronics company Braun was founded 102 years ago and has been owned Procter & Gamble, the umbrella company of Old Spice, Head & Shoulders and Ariel, since 2005.

When people think of ‘Braun design’, however, they are not thinking of personal hygiene or laundry products, but the cool monochrome electronic devices – the SK 4 combined radio and record player, the SM 31 electric shaver, the KF 40 coffee maker – released under chief design officer Dieter Rams in the mid-20th Century.

Rams joined Braun as an interior designer in 1955, having trained in architecture and interior design.

These days many people are familiar with Rams’ design maxims – ‘good design makes a product useful’, ‘good design is long-lasting’ and ‘less is more’ – but for a time the wacky post-modernism of Philippe Starck and Alessi had rendered those rules unfashionable.

A touring global exhibition, called Less Is More, and the self-confessed ‘homage’ of Apple's Jony Ive across the iMac, iPod and iPhone give Rams’ functional and aesthetic principals worldwide impact.

There have been numerous monographs collecting his work since.

Now a new book, Braun: Designed to Keep, charts Braun’s defining moments across three sections and 500-plus photographs, with unpublished archival images, internal documents and a narrative that draws on the parallel cultural and political history of Germany.

It makes a incontestable case that the Braun brand values – simplicity, usefulness, longevity – changed the way household products were perceived.