The Designer Who Changed Apple
How Jony Ive’s design principles and products galvanized Apple’s recent innovations
Over the past few months, I have become immensely interested in design and why things work the way they do (and also why they don’t work in any other way). Some of this interest has come from trying to improve my art and drawing skills. The remaining has come from wanting to understand the intricate and underlying design principles that envelop many of the products we see around us. Whether it is a great film like Inception or a finely designed car like a Ferrari or even a well-cooked meal, I find myself wanting to know more about how it was designed and, more importantly, the people that designed it.
So, three weeks ago, I happened to come across a Youtube video in which NBA superstar Kobe Bryant talks about how he makes it a habit during his offseason to speak with top individuals in different fields (“leaders in industry”) who are well-known and also have a body of work that underlies their success. In the video, Bryant discussed how he once scheduled a visit to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California and spent the day there speaking with Apple’s senior vice president of Design, Jonathan (Jony) Ive.
Towards the end of his recount of his day at Apple, Bryant talks about something Jony Ive asked him: “How do you prepare? How do you build your game?” Kobe responds by telling Ive that he prepares and builds his game much of the same way that Ive designs the Apple products — by cultivating a process that is sequential (but quite intricate) and built from a solid vision of the end-goal. The vision is almost the most important step because of the sheer number of small steps and adjustments necessary in order to create the excellent final product, whether it is a Kobe Bryant picture-perfect jumpshot or a revolutionary product like the iPhone. In Bryant’s eyes, the processes are one and the same and they both require two very important things: relentless focus and unadulterated care towards what you are creating.
Shortly after hearing Kobe Bryant talk about his discussions with Jony Ive, I started to do some research of my own in regards to Apple’s senior VP of Design. During this research process, I stumbled upon technology writer and author Leander Kahney’s book titled “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.” The book, while not an authorized biography, still gave me a unique lens through which I could simultaneously examine Jony Ive’s illustrious career and enthralling life story. I will aim to use the rest of this blog post to discuss some of the pivotal moments in Jony’s life and career as described in Kahney’s book.
School and Early Designs
Jonathan Paul Ive was born in Chingford (a suburb of London) on February 27th, 1967. His father, Mike, was influential to Jony’s early foray into the world of design. The father and son were “constantly keeping up a conversation about the built environment and what made-objects were all around them…and how they could be made better” (Kahney, 4). At home, the duo would work in the workshop that Mike Ive built and it was in this workshop that Jony came away with the overarching principle that encompasses all of his work: “I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product” (Kahney, 6). This intuitive sense of design done right and with tremendous care would eventually carry Jony Ive to the top of the design world.
At school, he earned top grades and his examination results “put him in the top 12 percent of students nationwide” (Kahney, 12). While his grades gave him the opportunity to apply to the nation’s top universities like Oxford or Cambridge, Jony eventually chose to go to Newcastle Polytechnic (known as Northumbria University) since it was “(and still is) regarded as the top college in the United Kingdom for ID [industrial design]” (Kahney, 13). At Newcastle Polytechnic, Jony learned about making products that were threaded together with “high quality, high technology and minimalism,” which were concepts that would show up in his future work.
While in school, Jony also claimed that he “did nothing other than work,” however, he went on to explain that it was out of his desire to respect the work he was doing: “the idea that actually it was important — and if you didn’t take the time to do it, why should anybody else?” (Kahney, 19). It was at Newcastle that Ive would begin extensively experimenting with the color white and how it could enhance the beauty of a product or design. The color, as we all know now, has become integral to many of Apple’s products ranging from the iPhone to the iPad.
Life After College and Before Apple
By the time Jony left college, almost everyone that he had worked with had come to appreciate his sheer focus to build a product perfectly. Kahney writes that while “most students might build half a dozen models, Jony had built a hundred” (Kahney, 27). However, before he left college for the working world, he came into contact with his first Apple product: the Macintosh. Jony claims that it was “the first time he felt the humanity of a product” at such a deep level that he came away with “a real sense of the people who made it” (Kahney, 28–29).
Upon leaving Newcastle Polytechnic, Jony Ive began working with a design consulting firm called Roberts Weaver Group (RWG) in London. While he grew as a young designer and impressed his colleagues in his short time there, it was evident that Jony was meant for greater and more challenging design problems that would stretch his abilities even further.
Ive next worked for a start-up called Tangerine, which was also based in London. It was at Tangerine that he would first gain exposure to “getting things right and fit for a purpose” (Kahney, 45). Jony became obsessed with humanizing technology, which, at the time, was still largely viewed by consumers as esoteric. It was also during his time with Tangerine that Ive “understood that style has a corrosive effect on design, making a product seem old before it’s time. By avoiding style, he found that his designs could not only achieve greater longevity, he could focus instead on the kind of authenticity in his work that all designers aspire to, but rarely achieve.” (Kahney, 46).
Arrival at Apple
Jony would arrive to Apple eventually via the intense recruitment of Robert Brunner when Jony was still working with Tangerine as a consultant for products that Brunner and Apple wanted to outsource. By doing this consulting work for Apple, Jony was able to see that while he had done “a lot of interesting work up to that time,” the problems surrounding his work with Apple were much more complicated and interesting as a designer to attempt to solve (Kahney, 59). He also felt that Apple offered a “supportive environment” and that it was definitely the type of place “where a designer can focus less on day-to-day business and more on design as a craft” (Kahney, 59). For these reasons, in September 1992, at age twenty-seven, Jony made the call to Brunner that he would officially move to Cupertino, California from London, England to work full-time for Apple as a designer.
The group that Jony would be working with when he arrived at the Apple HQ at 1 Infinite Loop in September 1992 was called the IDg, which stands for the industrial design group. The IDg (led by Brunner), at its core, was “a small, tight, cohesive group of extremely talented designers who all work on design challenges together” (Kahney, 74). However, while the dynamic of the group was conducive to great design, Apple at the time was in decline both financially and commerically. So, a few of the first products Ive worked on were under the immense pressure that comes when a company unyieldingly expects your product to save the company. But, Jony saw the dire straits that Apple was in at the time as an opportunity to showcase his skills to his new employer: “When you’re aware of the lost revenue each day the schedule slips, it tends to focus your attention” (Kahney, 77).
However, over time, what Jony saw as a prime opportunity to prove his worth became the conduit through which others at the company began to feel stressed out and over-worked. Brunner eventually left Apple and he would go on to do consulting work with “Nike and Hewlett-Packard,” as well as help to create, in 2007, “the Beats by Dr. Dre brand of headphones, which have been a mega success” (Kahney, 95). The position held by Brunner as the leader of the IDg at Apple was now vacant and, by that time, Jony had shown Apple that he had what it took to take over that role and carry Apple out of the turbulent times.
Meeting Steve
No story of Jony Ive would be complete without the mention of his close relationship with the late visionary Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple and proclaimed to all the demoralized employees that the company “would be returning to its roots” and that the goal was “not just to make money but to make great products” (Kahney, 101–102). In just a few short weeks of meetings, Jobs got rid of all but four products that Apple had worked on before he returned. He claimed that Apple would “only sell four machines” and this radical move symbolized an important shift towards ruthless focus on the creation of a small number of great products rather than to “offer more and more products” that were shoddily built and unimaginatively designed (Kahney, 103).
Jobs’ mantra was the following: “Rather than competing with commodity PC makers like Dell, Compaq and Gateway, why not make only first-class products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products?” (Kahney, 105). Before Steve Jobs arrived at Apple in 1997, many of Apple’s products “looked like they came from four different companies, not one. It drove Jobs crazy” (Kahney, 108). With “focus and simplicity” as the new driving theme of an Apple under Steve Jobs, the possibilities seemed endless.
Another fundamental shift under Jobs was that he kept impressing on all those at Apple that “the design was integral to what would make [Apple] great” and that design would once again come to dictate the engineering, not just vice versa (Kahney, 127). As far as making a product was concerned there would be no compromises made after a vision was created by Jobs and Jony. So, Apple became a company that once more was driven by design, not just engineering. And, Jony’s IDg would be at the center of this new revolution.
The iPhone
With the success of the iMac in 1998, Apple began to work its way up and out of its financial duress. Jony and his IDg team was lauded by critics everywhere for creating such an elegant product that seemed to breakaway from the classic image of a computer. Computers, “thanks to the iMac, became fun and fashionable” and the iMac especially garnered Jony widespread public attention (Kahney, 135).
In the early 2000s, Apple introduced Mac OS X, a new operating system for its line of computers and, a few years down the road, iTunes was packaged along with the operating system. However, iTunes alone did not gain much traction or acclaim, so Jobs and Ive went to work on designing a device that would ultimately revolutionize music as we know it — the iPod. The iPod allowed for iTunes to finally breakthrough and gain significance as a portal through which users could listen to any music they wanted. The white color of the iPod also “sent a message that the machine wouldn’t dominate the user, unlike black products that tended to come off as ‘technical’ or ‘nerdy’”(Kahney, 182).
The creation of the iPod was revolutionary for Jony Ive’s career as it was a product that epitomized everything Ive stood for and valued. The device was borne from the philosophy that “nothing [was] left to chance; everything must be deeply considered” (Kahney, 198). The creation process also displayed “Jony’s fanatical drive for excellence,” which is “most evident in the stuff beyond the obvious; the stuff you perhaps don’t notice that much, but which makes a difference to how you interact with the product, how you feel about it” (Kahney, 198–199).
The iPod also laid the groundwork for Apple to begin considering how the company could transition into the phone industry. It became very clear that many people “were carrying around both an iPod and a cell phone,” so why not just create a product that has the best of both worlds? (Kahney, 215). After much deliberation and many prototypes, the iPhone was finally designed. The front of the product did not even bare the Apple logo or the name of the phone; however, Jony and his team knew that if they made a “startingly beautiful and original design,” then they wouldn’t need to have those things on the front of the phone. The iconic design would allow the iPhone to stand by itself and everyone that came into contact with it would know about the company and the people that made it.
The iPad
Having made the iPod and iPhone, Jobs and Jony’s final collaboration would be their crowing achievement together: the iPad. Both Ive and Jobs wanted to and even planned to make the iPad before the iPhone; however, the “technology was not there yet” to make the iPad a reality. However, once the technology caught up, the next important phase was to ensure that the device was created such that it “needed no explanation” and was also “fully intuitive” (Kahney, 233). Jony also wanted to make sure that users would feel inclined to touch the iPad and “pick it up and hold it and have a tactile experience” (Kahney, 235). This is one of the main reasons why the iPad from the start has had a “tapered back that swept away underneath the screen, opening a gap for fingers to slide underneath” (Kahney, 235).
When it was completed, Jobs revealed the iPad on January 27, 2010, and proclaimed the device to be more “intimate than a laptop,” which helped to convey “the sense that the iPad was at the intersection of both technology and art” (Kahney, 237). The iPad was a great commerical success for Apple as over twenty-five million devices were sold just after a year from its release (Kahney, 237).
Jony Ive and His Future At Apple
Having played such a pivotal role in the creation and success of many of the Apple products in existence today, Jony Ive became the darling and star of the company. Steve Jobs even asserted that “[Jony Ive] has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up” (Kahney, 251). However, even after Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011, Ive has continued to remain “a busy and engaged man” within the halls of Apple. The organizational structure of the company now revolves around CEO Tim Cook, who is seen as a more collaborative leader and less fiery than Steve Jobs. However, it is well-known that Jony Ive and his IDg have “enormous operational clout” and they call “the shots with engineering and manufacturing” (Kahney, 264).
Jony’s next great challenge is to “keep Apple fresh and innovative” so that the products don’t become stale and unoriginal (Kahney, 270). Having created a set of original products, does Ive have a few more revolutionary ideas up his sleeve that will revamp the technology field as we know it? For the moment, the Apple Watch, coming in early 2015, is set to be the product that could be the start of a new design journey for Apple and Jony Ive.
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A few months back, I happened to be watching Apple’s WorldWide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) 2014 on Youtube and, during the talk, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, was showing the audience the new user interface for Mac OS X Yosemite when he jokingly referred to the painstaking efforts that went into creating Yosemite’s trash can icon: “You wouldn’t believe how much time we spent crafting a trash can.”
The comment made by Federighi about the trash can icon during WWDC 2014 initially just registered as a comedic insight into the things Apple and the people that work there tend to focus on — the way a trash can icon looks. But, at its heart, I believe Federighi was actually trying to shed light onto the ridiculous amounts of care and diligence that takes place within an innovative company like Apple. Having read Kahney’s excellent book on Jony Ive and all that he has accomplished at Apple, I have come to appreciate the amount of complete focus, care, and due diligence Ive and those under his tutelage exercise while developing their products. It is definitely a labor of love. But this labor of love is what produces great products.
“But to me, that is why I bought an Apple computer in the first place. That is why I came to work for Apple. It’s because I’ve always sensed that Apple had a desire to do more than the bare minimum. It wasn’t just going to do what was functionally and empirically necessary. In the early stuff, I got a sense that care was taken even on details, hard and soft, that people may never discover.”
— Jony Ive (Kahney, 117)
Greatness tends to come from doing the small things well consistently. And, if you do enough of these small things well, they will amount into an excellent achievement (or product) eventually. In other words, Jony Ive, Federighi, and others at Apple are willing to care “enough to commit the enormous time and effort to get something right,” even and especially in the aspects (like the trash can icon) that the users of their products will most likely not ever notice or see (Kahney, 269). But, for Jony Ive and Apple, that has made all the difference.
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Sources
- Kahney, Leander. Jony Ive: The Genius behind Apple’s Greatest Products. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
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