“The German designer Dieter Rams used the metaphor of a good English butler: products should provide quiet, efficient service and otherwise fade unobtrusively into the background. (A former butler from Buckingham Palace advising the actor Anthony Hopkins on his role in the film Remains of the Day commented: ‘When you are in a room it should be even more empty.’) Rams’s designs for Braun over a forty-year period through to the mid-1990s used simple, geometric forms and basic non-colours, predominantly white, with black and grey used for details, and primary colours applied only for small and highly specific purposes, such as on/off switches. The consistent aesthtic cumulatively established by Braun was one of the most formative influences on houseware design in the late twentieth century and established instant recognition for the company that many have sought to copy but few have equalled.”

—John Heskett, from Toothpicks & Logos: Design in Everyday Life., 2002.