Dieter Rams Designs, Silence, and the Abandoned Systems

from Internal Note, Innovation Hangar Archive (Unpublished Segment)

There’s a reason Dieter Rams’ designs feel like they’re whispering.

Things that were designed for a world that no longer wanted to be shouted at. Long before most people spoke of "interface fatigue," Rams was already subtracting. He wasn’t fighting complexity. We consider that he was ghosting it.

At the Hangar, Rams still remains a recurring thread. As a caution more than mere stylistic footnote. A question mark here. So while some of the earliest Hangar documents (Ref: HNGR-0402: “Omitted Systems and Anti-Interfaces,” 1997, author unknown) speculated that if Rams had been placed inside an early UI lab — Bell Labs, maybe Xerox PARC, our research shows that the entire trajectory of computing might’ve bent away from feedback loops and into focus fields.

(Note: portions of HNGR-0402 were redacted from digital archives in 

2004 and exist now only in microfiche. Why this was done is unclear.)

Our article The Harmonic Interface draws a line between Rams’ physical ethic & the lost designs of early tactile computing researchers. Particularly the “silence matrices” that were heavily mentioned in a 1973 Bell Labs memo, where input/output was intended to evoke sensation rather than response.

Consider also a timeline we outlined in Analog Current: Forgotten Pathways in Computing History. To many, Rams is not a designer of physical objects anymore, yet more of a mentor for a generation of “invisible engineers”. Those people were tasked with keeping software humane and analog-tethered. Many of these names never appear in official design histories. One, identified only as “M.”, left behind a short memo before vanishing from his consultancy post in 1982. It read: "When everything responds instantly, there is no longer a self to respond."

Whether “M.” ever existed is still debated.

We now ask: was Rams’ influence wider than admitted? Were there unacknowledged overlaps between Braun’s industrial designers and the engineers behind early analog feedback systems? Why were so many prototypes from this period "lost", especially those filed under Braun’s experimental sketchbooks, 1975–77?

(🔒 Access to full catalog of the Rams/Vitsœ comparative archive currently requires Level R-7 clearance. Reach out to Innovation Hangar with biometric confirmation.)

From the analog current standpoint, Rams’ ethos is a form of alignment. The system re-grounds upon adding layers. It reshapes our expectations of what “technology” should even feel like in today's day and age(s).

And maybe, if the more obscure references in the Bell Labs files are taken at face value, Rams and his contemporaries weren’t just trying to make better products. They were trying to slow time.

Still, that IS for another memo.

---

📎 Related Archives:

• The Leroy Lettering System: Precision Before Pixels

• Ancient Note-Taking: When Paper Wasn’t an Option

• Outforms: The Paper System Built to Think With

🕳 Further Reading:

• “Negative Feedback Loops in UI Design,” Internal Hangar Paper, 2016 (author unknown)

• “Theory of Discreet Tech,” ed. T. V., 2019 (only 12 copies printed, see Library Log CX-03)

Filed by: J.S. under Systems Archive to Design Influence to Unverified Connections
Białowieża Forest, Hangar Stack D
Date: August 2025