Apple designer Jony Ive (a.k.a. Sir Jonathan Ive) in a 2008 photo.Paul Sakuma/The Associated Press
Jony Ive is one of the greatest industrial designers in the world. As senior vice-president of design at Apple, Ive has brought the world the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, devices that offer high design for the mass market, and helped usher in an era in which we're all designophiles. But does anyone outside of hard-core Apple enthusiasts and the world of industrial design know who the English-born Jony (pronounced "Johnny") Ive is? Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, a daily news website that is all Apple all the time, sets out to introduce him to a wider audience in the new biography, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products.
How would you characterize Ive's stature as an industrial designer?
He's up there with the greats, for sure. There's been a long history of incredible industrial design, but he and the company have had a really incredible run. Their inventions are as important as things like the telephone and the television, the automobile or the washing machine. They're universal, and they have these huge societal impacts. It changes everything: the way we work, communicate, play.
He always seems interested in getting people to touch things.
If you look at his products, they're very tactile. And of course, the iPhone and the iPad are the ultimate touch computers. One of the first things he got made was a pen and he added a little mechanism at the top so that people would fiddle with it. And this is a theme that goes through everything he does, adding the fiddle factor. The iMac had a handle not just so that people could carry it around, but because by touching something you make it less intimidating.
So-called 'emotional design,' where things are created to elicit an emotional response, is so popular today. Would you say Ive was an early pioneer of that?
Steve Jobs, when they developed the iPhone, said: Our goal is to design a phone that you could fall in love with.
Why do our phones need to be beautiful?
They're bringing craftsmanship of artisanal products on a hugely massive scale. Both of them [Jobs and Ives] are interested in well-made, very personal items. That used to be handmade stuff. You'd go to a tailor to get a suit made just for you, and it would be the best suit money could buy. Ive's proudest achievement is that he can make uncompromising products on such a massive scale.
He's said that if he and the design team were transplanted to another company it wouldn't work. Do you believe that?
Yes. The company culture has to support this design-driven approach. They fought pretty hard to establish it at Apple when Jobs came back [in the mid-1990s]. Apple is spending, I think, $10-billion this year on manufacturing equipment. When Intel builds a new chip plant they spend $3-billion and that's considered a massive investment. There's no other designer in the history of industry who has had this kind of resources at their disposal.
After the launch of the iMac in 1998, everything was being designed translucent in imitation of the computer. Have you seen him have that influence throughout his career?
I was at Best Buy the other day looking for a router. Half of them were in white plastic.
Do you ever think that he's bored at Apple? That he could apply his skill set to something new?
He's probably got the most diverse design job in the world. If you look at Apple's portfolio, there's quite a lot of diversity.
Was the launch of the iMac the big moment for Ive?
That was the turning point. Before Jobs came back, it [Apple] was very, very engineering-driven. Then Jobs came back, he bonded with Jony Ive and Ive persuaded him to do this bold shape that was crazy radical. And Jobs, bless his soul, went for it. And they designed it from the outside in. They really did change the culture. After that it became design-driven.
Ive always talks about the 'story' of a design and uses that as a starting point. Where does that come from?
It comes from his dad [who was a silversmith], it comes from his design education. I think a lot of designers think like this. But few designers are empowered as he is. There's not a lot of companies that will give design full rein.
This interview has been condensed and edited.