Kahney says: “ … if there’s such a thing as a single secret to what Jony Ive does, it is to follow slavishly the simplification philosophy.” But few designers apply it with such singular determination. Kahney points out that this philosophy of simplification is “design 101,” a principle taught in virtually every design program. “But one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.” “It’s a very strange thing for a designer to say,” he said. Jony would later say that his ultimate goal is for his designs to disappear. Driven in no small part by his father’s example and earnest encouragement, you could see the obsessive qualities in his earliest efforts, where he distinguished himself as a precocious and determined young designer who would spin on his ideas until they were crafted to perfection–and would obsess, not about decoration and adornment, but the way parts fit together and how they functioned to serve a user need.įrom an early age, he was driven by a desire to simplify, to strip away extraneous functions or any design for its own sake. Ive was something of a design prodigy in his early years, the sort of kid who took things apart just to understand how they worked. “Jony and his design team will continue to improve the hardware, but the changes are likely to be incremental, not fundamental … These days, the design frontier is software, not hardware.” Born that way
APPLE PRODUCT DESIGN HAS IMPROVED JONY HOW TO
They spend 90 percent of their time working with manufacturing, figuring out how to implement their ideas.”Īnd the blurring of hardware and software: “Apple designers spend ten percent of their time doing traditional industrial design: coming up with ideas, drawing, making models, brainstorming. Or the blending of design and manufacturing: It allowed everyone to be more creative where it mattered, not less.” “It’s a very well-defined process, but it’s not onerous or bureaucratic. It galvanizes and brings focus to a broad group of people.” “… when you make an 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea, and everything changes–the entire process shifts. “The idea was to develop new form factors, new levels of expression and strategies for handling new technology without the pressure of a deadline.” For example, the average pulp from this catalog is unlikely to pau se to consider topics like: This is the very best of the bunch, particularly if you’re more interested in product and design than the sort of gossipy corporate intrigue that’s so common to this particular genre. Personally, I’ve devoured pretty much the entire catalog of memoirs, biographies and exposes on the phenomenon of Apple and the cult of personality of ousted co-founder/eventual savior, Steve Jobs. Perhaps no other work is as useful for understanding what makes Apple Apple as Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products (Portfolio, 2013). But the mark that Jony Ive would make as chief designer at Apple, to strike a Jobsian tone, would be more like a small dent in the universe. Growing up in a sleepy hamlet in the North of England, the only son of a passionate design professor and progressive activist in design education, you might expect Jonathan Ive to go on to make his own mark in the same field.
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