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Jonathan Ive - Apple's Design Magician
conq writes "BusinessWeek takes an in-depth look at the man behind the Apple magic. The article features a slideshow with all his designs (including one before he was with Apple)." From the article: "During an internship with design consultancy Roberts Weaver Group, he created a pen that had a ball and clip mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the owner something to fiddle with. 'It immediately became the owner's prize possession, something you always wanted to play with,' recalls Grinyer, a Roberts Weaver staffer at the time. 'We began to call it having Jony-ness, an extra something that would tap into the product's underlying emotion.'"
You have to admit, the guy must have some creative genious in him. Looking at all those projects there isn't one that I didn't like. The only one that had me scratching my head a little bit about was the vertical fax. Of course, perhaps there was a reason to the madness of that. Regardless, the designs implemented by the groups he has worked with are great.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Whats the deal with mentioning the amazing pen and not showing a pic of it?
C'mon guys, get it together. Now I have to go do a search on it...
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http://hatchedeggs.blogspot.com/
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
"During an internship with design consultancy Roberts Weaver Group, he created a pen that had a ball and clip mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the owner something to fiddle with."
Sometimes I fiddle with my balls too, does that mean I have the same sort of creative energy?
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The importance of balls in vancouver realestate
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But where is it due. How many designers actually take credit for these things? If you dig around and see how many people claim to have had something to do with these designs, it becomes clear that a good chunk of this stuff is outsourced. And I'm not talking the nitty gritty stuff, I'm talking the conceptualizations as well. Don't get me wrong, the man's a genuis, but he isn't responsible for half this stuff.
They have a slide saying that Jonathan Ive designed the Newton MessagePad 110. However, the picture they show is not the MessagePad 110 - it is a picture of the original MessagePad or the MessagePad 100 (which had the same case).
Also, I KNOW that Jonathan Ive designed the eMate 300 which they don't show. I was not aware that he did design the 110 - which may not in fact be true. Possibly they are crediting him with the design of the wrong device. In any case, they look like idiots with a slide of the Newton 110 and a picture of the OMP (Original MessagePad).
I would have emailed them to point out the problem, but was unable to find an email address in their "contact us" section.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The only thing more pathetic than a PC user is a PC user trying to be a Mac user. We have a name for you people: switcheurs.
There's a good reason for your vexation at the iMac's uncluttered all-in-one design: You don't speak its language. Remember that the Mac was designed by artists, for artists, be they poets, musicians, or avant-garde mathematicians. A shiny new Mac can introduce your frathouse hovel to a modicum of good taste, but it can't make Mac users out of dweebs and squares like you.
So don't force what doesn't come naturally. You'll be much happier if you stick to an OS that matches your personality. And you'll be doing the rest of us a favor, too; you leave Macs to Mac users, and we'll leave beige to you.
You're forgetting to look outside the geek, and into the bigger world. Less than 1% of PC owners actually upgrade their machines beyond RAM. They don't do chip upgrades, they don't do HDD upgrades, and they don't even use the expantion slots. Its not pointless, in fact, you've got it backwards. Its pointless to design for such things if no one (respectively) uses them. Its not pointless, its called meeting many design requirements, and meeting them better. Design for use, design for manufature, design for service, etc. That's why those machines only need the RAM upgrade slots. Granted that on the newer ones you can swap out intel chips, but no one (again outside the alpha geeks) will. So the opposite of pointless in SO many ways.
Because that's called a laptop without a battery and is fuckin' pointless. Sure, it looks cool but once its outdated you throw it away. People don't like that with laptops but they put up with it because its portable.
Most people put up with it with laptops because they just don't care. Most people do exactly what you said, they buy a computer, and once it's outdated, they get a whole new computer.
Just junk food for thought...
You believe wrong.
Don't forget that Macs were supporting dual display setups (and triple, etc.) before Windows even knew what to do with one screen. Some say it still doesn't.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
I don't know a single person outside of the geek/IT realm who doesn't go to costco/best buy/etc and buy a whole new computer with a new monitor when the old one is outdated. Not one. The iMac is no different - your new computer comes with a new monitor. Monitors get outdated too ya know, or are you still using the same 14"CRT from 1997? The vast majority of people out there don't care that they won't be able to re-use the monitor as a second display with their shiny new computer - most don't even realize you can do that )or the thought of openeing their shiny new computer and adding a second video card is far too scary for them).
As far as any other types of upgrades go, you've got to be joking, right? Swapping video cards and CPUs? Not a chance - heck, by the time the average user feels a need to upgrade either, the interfaces are different and their mobo is obsolete. Hard drives? That's what externals are for. Have you seen the storage displays at the big bix stores lately? USB/FW drives are selling like crazy because people just want to plug them in without opening their cases...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Wrong. Most people who buy a computer don't want a computer per se. They want to write emails, create photo albums, listen to music, browse the web. The computer is just the means by which all this is accomplished. Very few in the tech industry seem to realize this.
Sort of how Nintendo declares that while Sony and Microsoft see themselves as tech companies who make games, Nintendo sees itself as a game company that just happens to use tech.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
We have a name for you people: switcheurs.
My god you're good.
I hope the rest of you trolls out there are paying attention to this Arrogant Mac Guy. He really knows his stuff.
Read the parent post. No, really. It's totally worth it. Take a minute. I'll wait.
Done? Good. See how you sort of want to laugh out loud, but how you also just threw up a little bit in your mouth? See how you can't tell if he's serious, or trying to be funny; whether he's mocking arrogant Mac users or IS an arrogant Mac user?
Didn't you sort of feel like going to the Apple store and physically murdering one of those smug little Genius Bartenders? And then buying an iBook for $8000? THAT'S a good troll.
This guy, he is elevating the Slashdot troll from common verbal diarrhea to subliminal political treatise. He's breeding a little revolution.
I've been watching him. This thing has evolved. He's been honing it, polishing, like a fine little gem. He has posted something similar about 437 times, and no two are exactly the same. It is the snowflake of trolls.
It's not even a troll. It's a fauxtroll. A trollody. A trollsterpiece.
Arrogant Mac Guy. Awesome. Keep it up. Or cut it out. I love to hate you and hate to love you.
And I need a Sprite.
I don't know, I would say that using the description "Post-Industrial Elegance" is a kind of faggotry in it's own right.
By tucking the electronic guts of the Mac right behind the LCD display, Ive's team essentially made the PC disappear. Can someone explain why this won't be the future of PC design for anyone other than gamers--or why the rest of the industry hasn't followed suit yet?
Perhaps not the rest of the industry didn't follow, but don't overlook these triumphs of industrial design.
I had the pleasure of remotely supporting a half dozen of these fine machines. The only thing that held me together was my dream of the day they would be retired, and I could take one out and go 'Office Space' on its ass.
You answered it yourself - because it looks cool.
Function is mostly solved; aside from gamers and developers, almost any computer will work for average Joe's desktop use. What's left? Form - looks, interface, size, etc.
$10 curtains block the light just as well as $200 curtains.. but people still buy the $200 curtains.
Partly because it isn't a sequential process, partly because it shows up in many different guises, and partly because it just is plain hard! The hardest part is making the design just disappear, so that the program, device or object "just works". Some references are "Design for the real world" by Victor Papanek, and "Critical Path" by Buckminster Fuller.
Getting something to the point of "just working" takes time. The article mentions where a lot of the historical basis of the design elements come in. As an example, the Bauhaus school, which has rectilinear, minimialist lines, could not be confused with the Art Deco period, which has sweeping, organic lines modeled on natural plants. And either would not be confused with the organic shapes in a science fiction show, like Lexx. A designer knows the cultural associations, and cannily manipulates those to frame his message.
Further, they are semi-conscious to the observer. The art of design consists of either fading into the woodwork so that the elements are almost not noticed (save for a feeling of "rightness") or having one element out of place so as to attract attention, but avoiding the over the top kitch. Once these associations are made, they become part of the cultural backdrop, and therefore more grist for the mill. Such is the magic of postmodernism.
As an available example, the book is a cultural artifact; it is 2000 or more years old, and has a standard form that has been finessed for all those years. The design principles of typography are still a fertile area for exploration. O'Reilly has a colophon, how each book was made. For utilitatian subjects, they sure do put a lot of thought into presentation. A reference to typography is "Design Principles for Desktop Publishers" by Tom Lichty. He has a number of cited references inside that are worth checking out. Another one is "Desktop Publishing for Dummies". Your bookshelf has a number of other examples... ...
And that is just one artifact. When you add electronics
What I am impressed with is the obsession to detail that carries over not just from the look of the piece, but the ability to manufacture it easily as well. I guess that is what separates stellar performers from hack wanna-be's. But that implies that not only does Apple have great industrial designers, but they have a culture that seems to avoid the "fling it over the cube" mentality.
But the real interest comes in knowing how to make this cultural leap, the business design principles. Rest assured, the design principles that can get you a stellar organization are closely guarded strategic secrets. However, is it just me, but have they not been in the open all along? And perhaps lost in the corporatist instrumentalist model so lovingly rendered in Machiavelli's "the Prince" and "the Discourses"?
This is progress?
Seriously. Many of his products seem to engender a love-hate relationship - either you really HATE the design, or you think it's amazingly cool. With such extremes, debate and dialogue is natural - and talking about a product is corporate PR nirvana, is it not? And here I'm going to do just that.
With the exception of the original iMac, I haven't been that wowed by Jonathan's minimalist approach - sometimes, because it seems he's shooting for minimal controls but not for minimal real estate. For example, consider the PowerBook 17" waste of keyboard space - why not tack on a numeric keypad and shift the speakers to left and right of the trackpad? Because it disturbs some sense of symmetry? I dunno....
Then the new iMac... ugh. That huge white space below the monitor (speakers???? anything???), and because of side placement of CD/DVD, inability of the unit to be placed within narrow enclosures... am I out-of-step here with the general design sensibilities of society? Do people genuinely love the iMac's design? If so - honestly, why?
sloth jr
You do realise apple is the only OS company that supports LIVE monitor switching right? I am talking about while the machine is running phyiscally unplugging one display and plugging in another.
Try that with windows or X. Both choke if you unplug the VGA connector and plug in a completely different resolution monitor or TV. My powerbook just blanks the screen and switches to the apporiate size.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
It's not semantic nonsense at all. At the design level, it removes the focus from the means, and puts it in the ends, where it should be.
Let me use an analogy. What do you say to someone who says "I need a car?" Very few people want a car. Cars are expensive, they require expensive gasoline, regular maintainence, insurance, etc. No, what people want is to go places. If somebody invented cheap teleportation tomorrow, the sales of cars would drop to nothing, because almost nobody really wants a car.
So now, if you're a designer looking for a solution to a problem, focusing on the ends is crucial. It might change your goal from "how do I design a better car?", to "how do I design a better way to get around?" Its a matter of coming up with a good solution to the problem, rather than working on solving problems with a particular, non-optimal solution. It's a trap engineers often fall into (I do it all the time), but one that they strive to avoid.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The new iMac makes a great developer machine. They're very fast (they run GCC as fast as the quad-G5), they can take plenty of RAM, and they've got big hard drives with FW800 ports for very fast external disks. They've also got great screens and are extremely quiet. The fact that they can run all three major OSs (Windows, Linux, OS X) within a very affordable virtualization environment (Parallels) is just icing on the cake.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Because your design of a "laptop without a battery" has the "[computer] right behind the LCD display" is why Ives is a worldwide renown designer, and you're a bitter poster on Slashdot.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
There is a handy use for the blank space on the iMac: Perfect for post-it notes. Works well for me...
The first PC to support dual displays was the IBM PC in 1981. The first PC OS to support it was IBM PC-DOS 1.0. Yes, PC's were text mode at that time, but dual monitor support was part of the original PC architecture and why the option ROMs and I/O mappings were distinct. DOS itself could do little with two monitors other than switch back and forth via the mode command, but applications could, and did, take advantage when they could. I ran dual-head CodeView before your precious Mac II in 1986.
OS/2 1.0 also had dual monitor support but that was officially dropped prior to release (mainly because MS was too stupid to figure out how to test and support it). I personally used dual-head OS/2 1.0 back in the day.
Frankly, it doesn't matter since multiple monitors didn't have significant adoption til long after, but to suggest that Apple came up with multiple monitors before PCs is absurd. Neither Macs nor PCs came up with the idea originally. I worked briefly on a dual 21" SGI workstation around 1985 or so while in college.