Deconstructing Product Design

Sixtant Electric Shaver

Hans Gugelot and Gerd Alfred Müller for Braun, 1962

1. Successor to the S-50 shaver introduced in the 1950s, the Sixtant by Braun — pronounced “brown,” not “brawn,” though the latter mispronunciation is common and serves the brand well with regards to male-oriented products — would become one icon of many born of a revolution in industrial design known as the Ulm movement, after the Ulm School of Design (HfG) in Ulm, Germany. The school extended Bauhaus principles to product design, resulting in a near pathological emphasis on aesthetic minimalism and the “form follows function” dictum. Dieter Rams, former chief of design at Braun, summarizes the philosophy as practiced at Braun: “By concentrating on the ‘bare necessities,’ ...