John Ive
Designer, and Leader
John Ive is the Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Apple Inc. He oversees the Apple Industrial Design Group and provides leadership and direction for Human Interface software teams across the company. Ive is the designer of many of Apple's products, including the MacBook Pro, iMac, MacBook Air, Mac mini, iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, iPad Mini, Apple Watch and iOS. Steve Jobs considered Ive to be his "spiritual partner at Apple".
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Make things for me and my friends. My father was a fantastic craftsman, a great silversmith. So I’d like to make some things in silver
There’s an odd paradox with white. It’s seen as sort of a non-colour, as entirely neutral, insipid even. But there’s real gravity, significance and purity to it. Plus, to actually make products and objects in white is a very hard thing to do. It’s...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
It doesn’t describe what we do or our design goals and it’s certainly not minimalistic to get to where we are. It takes a ridiculously long time to create something pure, simple and intuitive with which you have an emotional connection.
Hard question. I'm very critical. I believe that we sense when there's been care taken with a product.
A beautiful product that doesn't work is ugly. The best things we've done are harmonious. I think design is the whole thing. Beauty is in that it works.
There is a danger...I don't see it as flattery. I see it as theft. (Talking about copying desings in general). When you're doing something for the first time and you don't know it's going to work. I have to be honest the last thing I think is "Oh,...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Focus. Steve was the most focused person I've met in my life. It's terrifying that when you really truly focus, it seems a bit illegal. You can achieve so much. Steve would say "How many things have you said no to?" And I would have these sacrific...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Always been interested in watches. At first watches were designed before pockets were invented, so they were hung around necks. Then the pocketwatch happened. There were watches worn on fingers in the 17th century.
For reasons of function, for re...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Touch was odd. There were many times we almost gave up. We didn't know it was going to work.
On the Apple Watch, there were many technologies that started with the "what if" and "how do we do this?"
I think if you're doing a good job you can't just pay attention to the outside. You're designing the internal architecture.
I met the guys at Apple and then went back to London and did my own designs. Apple went on a big world tour to find a designer and chose me. I had two commissions: One to work with Apple on the PowerBook. The other was working in ceramics for an E...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
I wasn't working for a job. Some tried to persuade me to stay. Everyone I asked to meet with me did.
I was sponsored through college...I just wanted to meet people. People were so kind and patience. And I lugged that stupid model phone around with me.
Braun food mixer...I was shocked at the interest in this object and how well it was made and how beautiful it was. I didn't know what it did, but I assume it did it very well.
It was the only thing I could do. There's a sense of service. We make tools for each other.
In art school. The computers colleges had were terrible. I assumed the problems were with me.
When you eat something that's bad, you assume the food is bad. But when you use a bad product, you assume it's you.
In art school I used the Mac. Ther...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
That's what we try to do. I think for a lot of us, a large display that you can directly touch, seemed obvious and natural. It wasn't the case 9 years ago when we were first working on it.If it was inevitable and obvious we would've done it years ...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Years ago we made prototypes with bigger screens. They were interesting features having a bigger screen, but the end result was a lousy product because they were clunky like a lot of competitors' phones are still. Years ago we realized this is goi...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
The phone that we just launched...there's a special moment when there's an object you can touch, and everything just shifts. I remain surprised and thrilled every time you get that first model.
One of the advantages of being part of a design team that's been around for a long time is we've had the luxury to develop our process. We meet three or four times a week.
The designers gather around the same kind of tablets you see in Apple Stor...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Actually very small, 16 or 17 of us. It's grown steadily over the last 15 years. We've worked hard to keep it small.
Spending too much time with myself is the downside. Upside is having a great design team. No one has voluntarily left.
It is hard for us all to be patient. It was hard for Steve. It is hard for Tim. At any point in time, working on something, it’s always hard to just keep focusing on the product. One of the things different between us and some of our competitors i...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
We meet on average three times a week. Sometimes those meetings are over in his space, sometimes here in the design studio. We all see the same physical object. Something happens between what we objectively see and what we perceive it to be. That’...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
I provide some leadership and direction in terms of user interface – a subset of software. Just as I work, I’m working in the same way with the user interface team. Just geographically, we’ve always been close. The core creative community is very ...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free
Innovation at Apple has always been a team game. It has always been a case where you have a number of small groups working together. The industrial design team is a very small team. We’ve worked together, most for 15 or 20 years.
That’s a fairly ...This knowledge is worth millions but signing up is free