Jonathan Ive

Jonathan P Ive CBE British designer and Senior Vice President of Industrial design at Apple Computer. Two time winner of the Design Museum's inaugural Designer of the Year award (2002, 2003).

Sourced

• Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people's minds.
  • Interview for BBC (January 2002)

• The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.
  • Referring to the Apple design team. Interview for Design Museum (2003)

• The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.
  • Interview for Design Museum (2003)

• The more I learnt about this cheeky – almost rebellious – company, the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had reason for being that wasn't just about making money.
  • On how he felt when he used a Mac for the first time at college. Interview for Design Museum (2003)

• There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is.
  • On the design of the Apple Cinema Display. As quoted by Leander Kahney in a Wired News article (June 2003)

• I think so many of the objects we're surrounded by seem trivial. And I think that's because they're either trying to make a statement or trying to be overtly different. What we were trying to do was have a very honest approach and an exploration of materials and surface treatment. So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think 'of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?' It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.
  • Interview for the Icon Magazine (July 2003)

• It's sad and frustrating that we are surrounded by products that seem to testify to a complete lack of care. That's an interesting thing about an object. One object speaks volumes about the company that produced it and its values and priorities.
  • Interview for The Daily Telegraph (November 2005)

• "Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see . . . rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.
  • "The Globe and Mail" (January 2007)

• I think there's almost a belligerence - people are frustrated with their manufactured environment. We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use. In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole."
  • Speaking about the iPhone upon its introduction "TIME Magazine" (January 2007)

• It’s not too shabby is it?
  • On the iPhone, Macworld Keynote 2007