Good design is long-lasting - Rams' 7th Principle

Dieter Rams's "10 Principles for Good Design," Principle 7: "Good design is long-lasting (Gutes Design ist langlebig)." The official text continues: "It avoids being fashionable and thus never appears antiquated. In today’s throwaway society, it endures for many years."
Rams wrote this principle in the late 1970s. His explicit use of the phrase "throwaway society" within the principle was a declaration to the times, going beyond mere design guidelines.

Critique of Planned Obsolescence

"Planned obsolescence" is a method of designing products to appear "outdated" even when functionally sound, thereby inducing consumers to replace them. It was widely practiced in the American home appliance and automotive industries in the 1950s and 60s.
Rams viewed this as an ethical betrayal of design. He saw redesigns that merely changed a product's appearance without altering its function as a waste of resources and a deception to consumers. In a 1976 New York lecture, he said: "Future generations will shudder at the thoughtlessness with which we today fill our homes, our cities and our landscape with a chaos of junk."
In the 2018 documentary film "Rams," Rams admitted to being one of the contributors to the culture of overconsumption. "If I had my life to live over again, I would not want to be a designer"—a weighty statement, confessing how even those with a design philosophy can unwittingly become complicit within industrial systems.

606 Shelf—65 Years of Active Proof

The most eloquent proof of Principle 7 is Vitsœ's "606 Universal Shelving System," designed by Rams in 1960. This modular shelving system, where shelves and cabinets hook onto E-profile aluminum uprights fixed to the wall, continues to be manufactured and sold unchanged as of 2026—for over 65 years.
Most importantly, it offers backward compatibility: parts purchased in the 1960s are fully compatible with new ones bought today. Shelves can be repositioned without tools, reconfigured with each move, and expanded as room needs change. Spare parts are provided to existing customers, ensuring long-term use through repair. Shelves housed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the V&A in London are still being sold today.

The Design Philosophy of "Choosing Well, Once"

The question Rams's Principle 7 poses to the modern era is simple: "Can this product still be used 10 years from now?"
In 2024, the EU enacted the "Directive on Repair of Goods," a law requiring manufacturers to repair goods, guarantee access to spare parts, and prohibit designs that hinder repair. Rams's practice of "backward-compatible, repairable design" with the Vitsœ 606 in the 1960s aligns with the EU's emphasis on reparability and long-term use more than 50 years later.
ZACK's 18/10 stainless steel products opt for "simple geometric forms that aren't trendy" to prevent them from feeling "outdated" a decade later. The corrosion resistance of 18/10 stainless steel and the hairline finish, which minimizes visible scratches and reflections, also presuppose long-term use. "Choosing well, once"—this is the design attitude demanded by Rams's Principle 7, and it is also a purchasing attitude.
Next time, we will explore Principle 8: "Good design is thorough down to the last detail."