FM Radio: Red-Orange

This is where Rams’ typical aesthetic sensitivity, his special sense for colour nuances and their harmonious combinations, becomes apparent. These colour dialogues—in reference to the book by the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers titled Interaction of Color—concern not only the coordinated shades of lacquers or plastics, but also the colour nuances of different materials. A particularly successful example of this is the RT 20 radio, produced from 1961 onwards, of which there are two versions. In the first, the steel front, which is painted in off-white, is paired with beech veneer, while in the dark version, the anthracite-coloured front is combined with pear veneer. Not to mention the warm yellow tone of the dial illumination. Both the colour and material combinations of the RT 20 harmonise and offer two completely different impressions of the same unit. Here there are options that were not considered necessary a few years earlier with the SK4, nicknamed Snow White Coffin. But for the RT 20, they left it at these two-colour schemes and did not launch five or ten more onto the market. This deliberate colour restriction, typical of Rams, can still be found today in the current palette of upholstery fabrics in his Vitsœ chair line: linen upholstery is only available in four muted shades and the leather upholstery only in six colours. Exceptions or custom designs are not sanctioned. 

Dietrich Lubs, who joined the Braun design team in 1962 and made major design contributions there for almost four decades, can provide valuable information on the design approach to colours at Braun during the Rams years. When I asked how colours were selected in the first place, Lubs remembers: ‘We didn’t just use standard RAL colours, even when they functioned as a guideline. Instead, we also mixed our own colours. This was common practice even before I came to Braun. We painted our own colour cards with nitro colours and tested them on the model. If we weren’t convinced by a colour shade, the model was resprayed.’ This search for exactly the right colour shade was sometimes tedious and time-consuming: ‘… that was the worst of all,’ says Klaus Zimmermann with a laugh, the long-standing head of the model-making department at Braun. This is because too many layers of paint ruined details and proportions on the model. Zimmermann explained that, ultimately, it was necessary to find exactly the right granulate mixture for the production of a colour shade on the model. One realises that what seems obvious and self-evident today had to be worked out step by step in the design process.

The Braun pocket calculator ET22 control (1976) was truly exemplary with its convex keys that produce highlights. A joint project by Lubs and Rams that was to achieve world fame. Indeed, the initial versions of the iPhone’s Calculator app can certainly be understood as a digital homage. Yet, as far as the placement of colours and the size and arrangement of the keys are concerned, the current version in iOS 16 is an example of how an ever-increasing simplification of the graphical interface can also mean a loss of intuitive ease of use and aesthetics. Compared to the original, the app in the current version no longer seems like a homage, but instead watered down. After all, Rams and Lubs consciously chose yellow for a single button: the one that displays the result after a calculation has been performed. Nowadays, five yellow keys in the app provide potential for confusion among the various forms of arithmetic. Regarding yellow: Dietrich Lubs’ choice of this colour for the second hand of the wristwatches, wall clocks, and alarm clocks he designed is a striking element that still resonates today. Lubs stated: ‘The yellow second hand was also important to me as a unique selling feature that increases recognition. Other manufacturers already had white, black, red and green second hands. Yellow ones didn’t yet exist. That’s why the colour was used for all Braun watches and alarm clocks. Until today.’

Dieter Rams succinctly summarised his attitude to product colours in a filmed interview for the gestalten publishing company: ‘As far as colours are concerned, I have always been very cautious. (…) There were a few products where I was prepared to accept colour. I like colours—but they have to suit the product. Colour can dominate a room. And design shouldn’t dominate people, it should help people.’ One aspect is apparent and that is that the colour decisions Rams has made over a long life do not, of course, only apply to the designs of Braun or Vitsœ—there is also a sensitive use of colours in non-produced objects such as the containers of an envisaged cosmetics series by Braun or the concept for a Lufthansa tableware. And in his personal environment, the silver of his Porsche, the special olive shade of some doors in his house, and the colours of his garden plants catch the eye, in much the same way as the wonderfully faded blue of his Bofinger chairs, or the red of the Valentine typewriter. And last but not least, the colour of his jacket at his many public appearances in the last decades makes it abundantly clear who is standing before one. It is ‘Mr. Braun’.