Jony Ive

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So much of this era has been marked by creation and destruction, and even in the creative process itself, the teardown of the accepted order is vital. From John Arlidge’s long Time interview with Apple design guru, Jony Ive, who outdid even Braun’s immaculateness with his products:

“Ive is in a good mood today — and not just because he’s celebrating his 47th birthday. He likes the idea of this interview series because he sees himself as more of a maker than a designer. ‘Objects and their manufacture are inseparable. You understand a product if you understand how it’s made,’ he says. ‘I want to know what things are for, how they work, what they can or should be made of, before I even begin to think what they should look like. More and more people do. There is a resurgence of the idea of craft.’

Ive has been a maker ever since he could wield a screwdriver. He inherited his craftsman’s skills from his father, Michael. He was a silversmith who later became a lecturer in craft, design and technology at Middlesex Polytechnic. Ive spent his childhood taking apart the family’s worldly goods and trying to put them back together again. ‘Complete intrigue with the physical world starts by destroying it,’ he says. Radios were easy, but ‘I remember taking an alarm clock to pieces and it was very difficult to reassemble it. I couldn’t get the mainspring rewound.’ Thirty years later, he did the same to his iPhone one day. Just to prove he still could.

‘I want to know what things are for, how they work, what they can or should be made of, before I even begin to think what they should look like’ A love of making is something he shared with Jobs, Apple’s former chief executive who died three years ago. It helped the two men forge the most creative partnership modern capitalism has seen. In less than two decades, they transformed Apple from a near-bankrupt also-ran into the most valuable corporation on the planet, worth more than $665 billion.

‘Steve and I spent months and months working on a part of a product that, often, nobody would ever see, nor realize was there,’ Ive grins. Apple is notorious for making the insides of its machines look as good as the outside. ‘It didn’t make any difference functionally. We did it because we cared, because when you realize how well you can make something, falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure.'”

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Edwin Heathcote of the Financial Times isn’t very high on the new book about Apple designer Jony Ive, noting that seamlessness makes for beautiful products but ineffable biographical subjects. An excerpt from his new review:

“As Kubrick’s filmic anticipation of the iPad makes clear, Ive’s devices have been imagined before. Think of Ettore Sottsass, the Italian who made Olivetti the Apple of its time, designing typewriters and early computers with flair. Or Dieter Rams, the German designer whose products for Braun defined the company and are among the most beautiful products of the 20th century (and whose designs profoundly influenced Ive, even down to the rounded corners). Ive is far from unique as a designer who is synonymous with his company. What is new is the ubiquity of the products and the way they have insinuated themselves into every aspect of our lives.

Apple’s products are so beautifully and mysteriously constructed (where are the joints and bolts?) that they somehow mirror the obsessiveness of this secretive corporation. All of which makes them difficult to write about. Arguably what is most interesting is why they have become such a success, the social, political, aesthetic and cultural context which they have slotted into – or remade. And why have other companies not managed to emulate Apple’s design-led model?”

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