Jonathan Ive

Product Designer ( b.1967 )

Senior Vice President,
Industrial Design // Apple
Images: (left to right): (1) Jonathan Ive (2) iMac 1998 (3) iPod 2001 (4) Power Mac
G4 Cube 2000 (5) iTunes (6) i Book 1999

18 Designers of the World Chapter 2

 Timeline

Jonathan Ive
1967
Born in London, where he
spends his childhood.

1985
Studies design and art at 1989
Newcastle Polytechnic (now Becomes a partner at
Northumbria University). Tangerine, a London-based
design consultancy where
he works on a wide range of
products from power tools to
1992 wash basins.
Moves to San
Francisco to
join the Apple
design team. 1998
Appointed vice-president of
industrial design at Apple.
Launch of the original iMac,
which sells 2 million units in its
1999 first year.
Introduction of the Apple iBook,
the 22” Cinema Display,
PowerMac G4 Tower and iSub.
2000
Launch of the
Apple G4 Cube.
2001
Apple introduces the
Titanium PowerBook G4 2002
and the iPod portable Launch of the new sunflower-
MP3 player. inspired iMac with 15” and 17”
floating screens. Introduction of
the eMac, a version of the iMac
specially developed for use in
2003 the education sector.
Apple launches the 12” PowerBook
and the 17” PowerBook, which at 1”
thick and 6.8 lbs is the world’s slimmest
and lightest 17” notebook computer.

Wins the Design Museum’s first 2004

Designer of the Year prize. Launch of the multi-
coloured iPod mini and
ultra-slim iMac G5.
2005
Appointed senior vice-
president of design at Apple.
Launch of the Mac Mini.

2006
Jonathan Ive was
awarded a CBE.
2007
He received a National Design Award
in the product design category for his
work on the iPhone.
2008
He received the MDA Personal
Achievement Award for the
design of the iPhone.

Chapter 2 Designers of the World 19

 The iMac is the computer most credited with
reversingApple’s fortunes, its distinctive looks
and playful colors instantly finding a place on
consumer desks and in pop-culture history.
INTRODUCTION
The winner of the Design Museum’s inaugural De-
signer of the Year award in 2003 was JONATHAN
IVE (1967-), senior vice-president of design at Ap-
ple whose innovations include the iPod and iMac.
As senior vice-president of design at Apple,
Jonathan Ive has combined what he describes as
“fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff” with
relentless experiments into new tools, materi-
als and production processes, to design such
ground-breaking products as the iMac, iBook,
the PowerBook G4 and the iPod MP3 player.
He won the Design Museum’s first Designer
of the Year prize for the 2002 iMac and iPod.
20 Designers of the World Chapter 2
The Mac Mini is a scaled-
down product that has
been introduced at a lower
price. It can be seen as a
conscious effort on the part
of Apple management to
target a wider and lower-
end market.
Born in London in 1967, Ive studied art and de-
sign at Newcastle Polytechnic before co-found-
ing Tangerine, a design consultancy where he
developed everything from power tools to tele-
visions. In 1992, one of his clients – Apple – of-
fered him a job at its headquarters in Cupertino,
California. Working closesly with Apple’s co-
founder, Steve Jobs, Ive developed the iMac.
As well as selling more than 2m units in its first
year, the iMac transformed product design by in-
troducing colour and light to the drab world of
computing where, until its arrival, new products
were encased in opaque grey or beige plastic.
Ive and his close-knit team of designers at Ap-
ple have since applied the same lateral think-
ing and passionate attention to detail to the
development of equally innovative new prod-
ucts such as the Cube, the iPod and the Pow-
erBook G4, the world’s lightest and slimmest
17 inch laptop, and the ultra-slim iMac G5.
While not technically a computer, Apple’s
ultra-ultraportables run stripped-down ver-
sions of Mac OS X, making them de facto
Macs small enough to fit in your pocket. As
computing hardware becomes smaller and
more power-efficient, the mobile version of
OS X will become a bigger part of Apple’s
product road map.

IVE & APPLE
The original iMac G3, pioneered by Jobs and
Ive, revived the company when its future was
uncertain. Its design proved revolutionary and
left a lasting imprint on the changing computer
industry. Besides the original iMac and its suc-
cessors, the team led by Ive has designed the
iBook, MacBook, PowerBook G4, MacBook
Pro, eMac, Mac mini, Xserve, Xserve RAID,
Mac Pro, Power Mac G3 (blue and white),
G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, G5, and the New-
ton MessagePad, as well as Apple’s collection
of iPods and the newly introduced iPhone,
AirPort base stations and Cinema Displays.
“ We try not to bring out another product that’s just different.
‘Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s
genuinely better is very hard ”
Chapter 2 Designers of the World 21
The Apple iMac is the all-in-one
desktop that most every PC maker
Jonathan Ive
has been trying to emulate in the
recent rash of all-in-one desktops.
Some, like the Lenovo IdeaCentre
A600, have come close to match-
ing it in terms of style. And others,
like the Gateway One ZX6810-01,
have exceeded at least this Core 2
Duo-based model in the performance
arena. But no one’s yet been able to
match both the style and perfor-
mance of Apple’s flagship desktop
line. And with its latest update of the
iMac, Apple continues to aggres-
sively re-invent itself by updating its
design and lowering prices, without
forgetting about performance.
For Apple, Ive outlined, the end game isn’t
commercial success. “Apple’s goal isn’t to
make money. Our goal is to design and de-
velop and bring to market good products,”
he explained. “We trust as a consequence of
that, people will like them, and as another
consequence we’ll make some money. But
we’re really clear about what our goals are.”
This focus, he continued, has driven Apple
to produce only a small number of high qual-
ity products. “We try not to bring out another
product that’s just different,” he said. “’Differ-
ent’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing some-
thing that’s genuinely better is very hard.”
 The Air’s most remarkable feature was the
new technological advances in the use of
aluminum that led to its remarkably thin
but sturdy enclosure. By crafting the Air’s
body from a single block of aluminum,
Apple created the first “unibody” laptop.
Focus and simplicity are two things that Ap-
ple keeps in mind when designing their prod-
ucts. Apple and Ive are known for their atten-
tion to detail. “Simplicity speaks of the care of
how our products are developed,” he said, “it’s
not obvious how hard it was”.“It’s not the de-
sign team, or the mechanical team, it’s the com-
pany, and it’s because the company does care.
He talked about his team’s work on notebook Macs.
“When we were developing the notebooks, we
worked really, really, really hard to make sure that
when you opened it up, the display was the display.”
While many notebooks on the market encase their
notebook displays within one-inch thick picture
frame-type housings, or host control buttons around
their notebook displays, Apple’s focus on simplic-
ity betrays its care for the customer experience.
22 Designers of the World Chapter 2
The Mac Pro, the fastest
computer that Apple has
to offer, is currently one of
three desktop computers in
the Macintosh lineup, the
other two being the iMac
and Mac mini.
And even the simplicity of the experience of
opening a PowerBook up was “non-trivial” to
develop.
“One thing probably none of you have got a clue
about,” said Ive, speaking to the audience at the
Design Museum, “We worked really, really hard
to develop a mechanism that basically spring-
loads the clutch so that at a point when you are
opening it you counter-balance the display. And
it’s one of the points we spent so much time
working out, so that the product was so much
nicer than anything else.”
Announced at Macworld Expo in 2007, the first
iPhone went on to take the mobile world by
storm when it was released almost six months
later. Featuring technologies not initially avail-
able on the desktop version of Mac OS X, such
as Core Animation, the iPhone’s user interface
did to the mobile industry what the original Ma-
cintosh did to the computer industry. And with
each successive iPhone software update, the
iPhone gained even more features and stability,
finally embracing its calling as a true platform
with the introduction last summer of the App
Store and thousands of available application.
Like that first Macintosh of 1984, the iPhone
has reset the bar for the competition and raised
expectations for consumers.

RECOGNITION
Critics regard Ive’s work as being among the
best in industrial design, and his team’s products
have repeatedly won awards such as the Indus-
trial Designers Society of America’s Industrial
Design Excellence Award. Ive was the winner
of the Design Museum’s inaugural Designer of
the Year award in 2002, and won again in 2003.
Ive is known to be unselfish in how he is attrib-
uted: In interviews, for example, he always em-
phasises the teamwork that goes into the prod-
ucts for which he receives recognition and fame.
The Sunday Times named Ive as one of Brit-
ain’s most influential expatriates on 27 No-
vember 2005: “Ive may not be the richest or
the most senior figure on the list, but he has
certainly been one of the most influential. The
man who designed the iPod and many more of
Apple’s most iconic products has shaken up
both the music and the electronics industry.”
“ [Ive] embodies what Apple is perhaps most famous for: design ”
Chapter 2 Designers of the World 23
The Apple iPad. The name is a killing word
-- more than a product -- it’s a statement, an
idea, and potentially a prime mover in the
world of consumer electronics Announced on
Jonathan Ive
January 27th to a middling response, Apple has
been readying itself for what could be the most
significant product launch in its history; the
making (or breaking) of an entirely new class of
computer for the company. The iPad is a tablet
computer and is part of a category between
a smartphone and a laptop computer. Similar
in functionality to the smaller, less powerful
iPhone or iPod touch, it runs a modified version
of the same operating system (iPhone OS),with
a user interface redesigned to take advantage of
the larger screen. The iPad has a 9.7-inch (25
cm) LED backlit multi-touch display, 16 to 64
gigabytes (GB) of flash memory, Bluetooth, and
a 30-pin dock connector to sync with iTunes
and connect wired accessories.
Ive was number three on a list of 25. Ive
was also listed in the 2006 New Years Hon-
ours list, receiving a CBE, for services to
the design industry. The Queen was re-
vealed as being an iPod owner in June 2005.
A recent MacWorld poll listed Ive joining
Apple in 1992 as the sixth most significant
event in Apple history, while MacUser (a
subsidiary of MacWorld) writer Dan Mo-
ren suggested recently that, when the time
comes for Steve Jobs to step down as CEO
of Apple, Ive would be an excellent candi-
date for the position, justifying the state-
ment by saying that he “embodies what
Apple is perhaps most famous for: design.”
On July 18, 2007, Ive received the 2007
National Design Award in the product de-
sign category for his work on the iPhone.