Jonathan Ive
Jonathan Paul Ive is a British and American industrial designer, product designer, and creative director, born on 27 February 1967 in London.
Ive attended Chingford Foundation School and Walton High School before going on to study at Northumbria University. His work has extended across industrial, graphic, and product design, and he has also been recognised as an inventor. He holds citizenship in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
The honours Ive has received over the course of his career are numerous and span several countries and institutions. He was awarded the title of Royal Designer for Industry and received the Order of the British Empire, a distinction later elevated to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He also received the National Design Awards, the President's Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, and recognition from the Royal Academy of Engineering. The University of Gothenburg conferred an honorary doctorate upon him. Across the overlapping disciplines of industrial, graphic, and product design — and in his capacity as inventor and creative director — Ive's career reflects a sustained engagement with the designed and manufactured object.
Quotes by Jonathan Ive
Jonathan Ive's insights on:
I'm always focussed on the actual work, and I think that's a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.
If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive.
We won't do something different for different's sake. Designers cave in to marketing, to the corporate agenda, which is sort of, 'Oh, it looks like the last one; can't we make it look different?' Well no, there's no reason to.
'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.
I always like when you start to use something with a little less reverence. You start to use it a little carelessly, and with a little less thought, because then, I think, you're using it very naturally.
I get an incredible thrill and satisfaction from seeing somebody with Apple's tell-tale white earbuds. But I'm constantly haunted by thoughts of, is it good enough? Is there any way we could have made it better?
I think it's important that we learn how to draw and to make something and to do it directly. To understand the properties you're working with by manipulating them and transforming them yourself.
The benefit of hindsight is we only really talk about those things that did work out.
When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.
We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable, that leave you with the sense that that's the only possible solution that makes sense.