Jony Ive
Sir Jonathan "Jony" Paul Ive KBE HonFREng RDI; born 27 February 1967) is a British and American designer. Ive is best known for his work at Apple Inc., where he served as senior vice president of industrial design and chief design officer.[1][2] He has been serving as chancellor of the Royal College of Art in London since 2017.
Jony Ive
United Kingdom
United States (since 2012)
Former Chief Design Officer at Apple Inc.
Co-designer of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and iOS 7 to iOS 13
2
James Dyson (as Provost)
Ive joined Apple in September 1992, and was promoted to senior vice president of industrial design in the late 1990s after the return of co-founder Steve Jobs to the company, and Chief Design Officer in 2015. He held that role until his departure from the company in July 2019. Working closely with Jobs during their tenure together at Apple, Ive played a vital role in the designs of the iMac, Power Mac G4 Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and the user interface of Apple's mobile operating system iOS, among other products. He was responsible for the design of major architectural projects including Apple Park and Apple Stores.
Born in London, Ive lived there until his family moved to Stafford when he was 12. He studied design at Newcastle Polytechnic,[a] and later joined the London-based design firm Tangerine, where he worked on client projects for LG and Ideal Standard as well as Apple.[3] After leaving Tangerine to join Apple full time, he began designing the decade's PowerBooks and Macs, finally taking up US citizenship in 2012 to become a dual British-American national.[4] He was invited to join the Royal College of Art in May 2017 as its head-of-college, serving a fixed five-year term until May 2022.
Ive has received accolades and honours for his designs and patents. In the United Kingdom, he has been appointed a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI), an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (HonFREng), and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). In 2018, he was awarded the Hawking Fellowship of the Cambridge Union Society.[5] In a 2004 BBC poll of cultural writers, Ive was ranked the most influential person in British culture.[6] His designs have been described as integral to the successes of Apple, which has gone on to become the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the largest company in the world by market capitalization.
On 27 June 2019, in an interview with the Financial Times, Ive announced he would leave Apple after 27 years to start his own design firm, LoveFrom, together with industrial designer Marc Newson. In 2021, he was recruited by the Agnelli family to work on Ferrari vehicles.[7]
Early life and education[edit]
Jonathan Paul Ive was born on 27 February 1967 in Chingford, London, United Kingdom.[8][9] His father, Michael Ive, was a silversmith who lectured at Middlesex Polytechnic, and his grandfather was an engineer.[8] Raised in London, Ive attended the Chingford Church of England School and Walton High School in Stafford where he studied sculpture and chemistry.[8] While attending secondary school, he was diagnosed with dyslexia.[10]
According to a March 2014 interview with Time, "It was his teenage love of cars that made Ive decide to become a designer. When he left school, he checked out a few car-design courses in London, including one at the Royal College. He swiftly changed his mind. 'The classes were full of students making vroom! vroom! noises as they drew,' he recalls, still horrified."[11]
Ive decided to study industrial design at Newcastle Polytechnic instead. There he was exposed to a form of Germanic design which originated at the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus expressed the idea of only including what is needed into designs. This philosophy can be seen in his work with Apple.[12] While at Newcastle, some of his designs – including a telephone and a hearing aid – were exhibited at the Design Museum in London.[8] He graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts in industrial design in 1989.[8]
First iPod, introduced in 2001. Jon Rubinstein assembled the original design team including Ive as lead design engineer.
A vector render of the first-generation iPhone, first marketed in 2007. Its form factor is credited to Ive.
Although Ive's studio began designing an iPad-like device before the iPhone, the iPad was first released in 2010.
Influences[edit]
The work and principles of Dieter Rams, the chief designer at Braun from 1961 until 1995, influenced Ive's work. In Gary Hustwit's documentary film Objectified (2009), Rams says that Apple is one of only a handful of companies existing today that design products according to his ten principles of good design.[56][57]
He is also said to have been influenced by the Bauhaus tradition (known for its credos form follows function and less is more), which emerged in Germany during the 1920s and became a staple design approach adopted by the Ulm School of Design during the 1950s. The Bauhaus / Ulm design style was also adopted during the 1980s by luxury automotive brand Audi, which also influenced Jonathan Ive's designs (particularly his work with Apple), and has garnered comparisons in color stencil, structure, and lighting design.[58][59]