Following his Knighthood earlier today at Buckingham Palace, Apple’s resident design guru Jony Ive gave a rare interview to The Telegraph, offering some great insights into his inspiration to become a designer, and which of his designs he thinks he’ll be most remembered for.
Much like Steve Jobs (as revealed in Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography), Jony Ive drew a great deal of his design inspiration from his father, stating: “My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.”
Ive also reflected that one of his core values (and one of Apple’s) is attention to detail – another strong similarity he shares with Jobs. Along with that attention to detail also comes a commitment to creating the best products that he possibly can.
“It’s the ‘finishing the back of the drawer’ – you can argue that people will never see it and it’s very hard to, in any rational sense, describe why it’s important but it just seems important. It’s a way that you demonstrate that you care for the people that you are making these products for. I think we see ourselves as having a civic responsibility to do that. It’s important. It’s right. It’s very hard to explain why.” […]
Ive also reflected that he feels it is extremely important to care more about the product he is creating and the people who will be using it than about mass production and keeping up with the competition.
One of the concerns was that there would somehow be, inherent with mass production and industrialisation, a godlessness and a lack of care. […] And what preoccupies us is that sense of care, and what our products will not speak to is a schedule, what our products will not speak to is trying to respond to some corporate or competitive agenda. We’re very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.”
One of the most interesting and revealing comments that Ive made, however, at least in relation to Apple, is his response to the question of which of his designs that he would most like to be remembered for:
“It’s a really tough one. A lot does seem to come back to the fact that what we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about.”
Apple is reportedly working on updated versions of their Mac lineup, as well as a possible television set, the next version of the iPhone, a rumored 7-inch version of the iPad, and likely many products that nobody has really heard anything about yet . If Ive’s comments are any indication, the best is yet to come from Apple – and that’s something we can all look forward to.
I highly recommend checking out the entire interview over at The Telegraph – these are just a few of the nuggets of wisdom shared by Apple’s design chief.
