BORN IN ULM

161.53 meters. Foundation laid in 1377, completed in 1890. For 513 years, this city built on a single tower—citizens, generation after generation, without knowing if they would live to see its completion. For everyone who grew up here, it remains the tallest in the world. That has less to do with architecture than with what this tower says about attitude.

In 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were guillotined in Munich. Their sister Inge survived and posed a question that guided her for the rest of her life: How can one prevent a society from collectively failing again? Her answer was education — and she built it on the Kuhberg, a hill on the southwestern edge of Ulm.

In 1953, the Ulm School of Design opened. Max Bill, its first rector, had studied at the Bauhaus Dessau under Klee and Kandinsky. He designed the building himself: exposed concrete, precise angles, stone floors. From 1954, Tomás Maldonado taught at the HfG and fundamentally shifted its coordinates: design was not an art discipline but a scientific practice with social responsibility. Whoever designed an object decided on the lives of other people.

Ulm was already a place that produced thinkers. Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, at Bahnhofstraße 20 in Ulm. In 1929, he wrote to the Ulmer Abendpost: "The city of one's birth clings to life as something as unique as one's origin from one's biological mother." The HfG was further proof that this place produces people who look at things differently.

Hans Gugelot taught at the HfG Ulm and simultaneously collaborated with Braun in Frankfurt. Erwin and Artur Braun, who had inherited the company from their father in 1951, desired a new design language. Gugelot served as the bridge between Kuhberg and the factory floor. He introduced the systemic thinking of the HfG into production.

In 1955, Dieter Rams—23 years old, a trained interior designer from Wiesbaden—joined Braun as an employee. His first task: trade fairs, showrooms. But in Gugelot, he found someone who spoke the same inner language. A year later, the SK 4 was created.

The radio-turntable combination unit had a lid made of acrylic glass. Transparent, industrial, unreserved. The factory engineer had doubts—the fit was delicate, the form unusual. Gugelot and Rams insisted. When the device appeared at the trade fair, the press immediately dubbed it "Snow White's Coffin." The glass coffin that concealed nothing. The object revealed what was working underneath. Those who looked at the lid saw the mechanics. This was the declaration: an object that explains itself needs no lies.

In 1961, Rams took over as head of the design department at Braun. What followed was a singular project: every product conveyed the same conviction. The T 3 (1958) — a white pocket radio, with a round volume knob on the side, proportions that would appear in Cupertino 43 years later. The T 1000 (1963) — a professional shortwave radio, black, with precise scales, for journalists. A device whose form declares: "This is for serious work."

The ET 66 (1987) — a calculator, designed with Dietrich Lubs. Grey number keys, black function keys, a single orange key for the result. A color system that communicates hierarchy without saying a word. Apple adopted this exact color and key layout 14 years later — and kept it in every iPhone screen for 16 years.

Gugelot died in 1965 at the age of 45 — too soon, his work unfinished. Rams continued what both had started. During these years, he formulated his Ten Principles of Good Design — as a counterweight to a design industry that was becoming louder. The tenth principle became his most famous statement.

In Ulm, Gugelot taught that system design means considering function and form in such a way that the result is an object that explains itself. Rams translated this into a principle that is now universally accepted. The Magno shoulder strap of the Magvely 50 is exactly that — a solution so obvious that you wonder why it didn't exist before.

Jonathan Ive was born in London in 1967. As head of design at Apple, he placed Braun products on his desk — as a reference, as a benchmark. In Gary Hustwit's documentary Rams (2018), he publicly confirmed the connection: Rams' work had shown that an object can do without anything that distracts from itself. That restraint is a form of respect for the user.

In 2001, the iPod was released. Anyone who places it next to the Braun T 3 from 1958 — the same white casing, the same round control element, the same perforated grid texture, the same proportions — understands why this connection is no longer questioned in any design course. The distance between the two objects: 43 years and an ocean. The design language: identical.

The ET 66 provided the color scheme for the iOS calculator app: gray number keys, black function keys, and an orange result key. This layout remained unchanged in every iPhone from 2007 to 2023. Sixteen years, two billion devices. A conviction cast in exposed concrete on a hill in Ulm in 1953.