Design is not dress-up:

A designer who wants to achieve good design must not regard himself as an artist who, according to taste and aesthetics, is merely dressing-up products with a lastminute garment.

and don’t mistake gloss for design:

To use design to impress, to polish things up, to make them chic, is no design at all. This is packaging.

Technical specifications in isolation are not good design:

The majority of products that we encounter in our day-to-day lives scream for attention or try to impress us with their magnificence or miniscule size. These objects try to dictate our relationships with them. Good design creates powerful long-lasting relationships with products as good design creates objects with balanced proportions

Sustainable design:

There is an increasing and irreversible shortage of natural resources: raw materials, energy, food, and land. This must compel us to rationalise, especially in design. The times of thoughtless design, which can only flourish in times of thoughtless production for thoughtless consumption, are over. We cannot afford any more thoughtlessness.

Source: Dieter Rams: Design by Vitsœ.