Yesterday, Apple unveiled its latest line of iPhones and Apple Watch to the public with great fanfare. But today, we’re going to take a deep dive into the Cupertino tech company’s history at take a look at the profile and trajectory of Jony Ive, the former Apple lead design chief during the company’s rise in the Steve Jobs era.
Why did Jony Ive leave Apple? And how did he get there? The world of tech is one of constant evolution: Apple went from having a sweetheart deal with intel with its processors to developing their own, from having Samsung manufacture their screens to taking them into court over gestures for iOS. These are all anecdotes of things that are inside the product. Today, we focus on one man who made the exterior of the Apple products become as iconic as they are with their working components.
Jony Ive: A Design Maestro’s Journey
The man behind the look of Apple’s most iconic and revolutionary products is Jony Ive. From the iPod to the iPhone, the man was instrumental in shaping the tech industry as we know it. Jony Ive is the son of a psychotherapist and a silversmith in Chingford, London. Fun fact: Jony went to the same school in the same years as footballer David Beckham.
Battling dyslexia, and with a wavering passion for understanding how gadgets and devices work, Jony Ive loved to tear apart radios and cassette recorders to find out how they worked. Marked by that curiosity, it took him a while to pinpoint his exact industrial design career focus though.
Jony had a wide range of interests: from furniture to cars and jewelry and boats in between. When he went to Newcastle Polytechnic for college, he honed his design style, influenced by the German Bauhaus school of design: with minimalist philosophy, emphasizing the essentials, closely mimicking the design ideas of Dieter Rams.
Ive gone on an academic journey that was studded with awards. He won the Pitney Bowes’ Walter Wheeler Attachment Award and RSA scholarship.
A Twist Of Fate
Jony Ive’s journey into tech started when he had a chance encounter with Bob Brunner, a scout from Apple, who was hunting for innovative design firms to collaborate on a top-secret project, codename “Juggernaut”, in that quest, Brunner met Ive and the team at Tangerine Design.
By then, Apple had fired Steve Jobs and was under the management of John Sculley. The eras of the desktop personal computer were in full swing, and Apple’s focus was to make more and more, which meant expanding their product lines. So, Ive went on and took a job as a consultant for project Juggernaut, marking the beginning of his work with Apple. It wasn’t straightforward, and several factors popped in when he took the full-time job as chief design at Cupertino.
Apple’s Ive
In 1992, Ive joined Apple and had to redesign the Newton MessagePad, a sort of precursor to a modern tablet, which, despite commercial setbacks, became a design triumph. Newton’s design made Ive become acclaimed in the design industry and got a spot in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.
Ive designed the translucent case for the 1998 iMac in colors, and with Steve Jobs buying back Apple, they worked closely. He designed the Sunflower Mac and went on to create iconic products like the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone during the Steve Jobs era.
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Why Did Jony Ive Leave Apple?
After decades of work with Apple, Jony Ive decided in 2019 to leave the company to start his own design firm, LoveFrom. He survived the transition from Scully to Jobs, and then, Tim Cook left him during the post-Jobs years. But as Tim Cook and his style took hold of Apple, a regime that became as tyrannical and controversial as Jobs’, Ive felt unsupported.
Since Cook was once chief of operations, his management style focused less on design and more on operations, and Jony felt discontent with that, coupled with now having to manage over 100 employees from the tight ship he used to run with barely 20 designers from New Zealand, Japan, USA, Germany, Ireland, and the UK.
Jony found it tiring and draining to fight with his colleagues over the things that were made by Tim Cook and his new crew. That wasn’t his style, so, he quit. And started his own gig with great prestige. Apple had their run with him, creating products that we enjoy and love.
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