A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive - The Man Behind the Apple Watch

8/10/2019 A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive - The Man Behind the Apple Watch

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A Rare Look at Design

Genius Jony Ive: TheMan Behind the Apple

WatchOCTOBER 1, 2014 8:00 AMby ROBERT SULLIVAN|photographed by DAVID SIMS
http://www.vogue.com/tag/photographer/david-sims/http://www.vogue.com/contributor/robert-sullivan/


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Photographed by David Sims, Vogue,October 2014

How Apples under-the-radar design genius, Jonathan Ive,

has found the way to our hearts.


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I first catch sight of Jony Ive across the Apple campus, in a

plain Dodger-blue T-shirt and white painters pants, in

conversation, nodding. The head Apple designer, who

brought you the iMac and the iPad and now, the AppleWatch, has a nearly shaved head and a tightly trimmed

beard. Hes not tall, not small, and looks as if he might be a

formidable rugby opponentthough even from a distance

he comes across as open and amenable, less likely to tackle

you than to do what he is doing with a colleague at this very

moment, which is listening.

Ive has a calming presence, like the Apple campus itself,

whose very address, Infinite Loop, lulls you into a sense of

Zen-ness. In the courtyard, trays of beautiful foodgrass-

fed steaks and fresh-made curries and California-born hot

sauceslead Apple employees out toward the open-air

seating, away from the white cafeteria that might be

described as a luxurious spa for the terminally nerdy. Whiteis the color of choice at Apple HQ as in the Apple product

line. It is through this white, with its clarity, its dust-hiding

lack of distraction, that you have already met Jonathan Ive.

To the south of the cafeteria is a tiny amphitheater, an

emotional site in Apples history: At the companys 2011

memorial for Steve Jobs, Coldplay took the stage, as didJony Ive. Ive is notoriously reluctant to give interviews, not

to mention speak in public. But on that day he spoke for the

man whom he called his dearest friend. For his part, Jobs,

when he was alive, referred to Ive as his spiritual partner.

I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas

ultimately can be so powerful, Ive told the assembledmourners, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts.


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Another thing Jobs understood way back in 1997, the year

he returned to the company that had kicked him out a

decade earlier, was that Ivethen still in his 20swas a

designer with the background and the psychological toolsnot just to create the latest, hottest devices but also to

orchestrate a team. Like cutting-edge steel, Ive is strong and

persistent but flexible, and most crucial (most Jobs-ian, in

fact), he is passionate about things, as in things,literally.

So much of my background is about making, physically

doing it myself, he says.

In other words, the secret weapon of the most sought-after

personal-electronics company in the world is a very nice

guy from Northeast London who has a soft spot for

woodworking and the sense that designers ought to keep

their design talents backstage where they can do the most

good. Theres an odd irony here, he observes. I think our

goal is that you would have a sense that it wasntdesign.RELATED STORIES

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When you sit down with Ive, he is eager to chattoo eager,

maybe, for the Apple time-minders who are always looking

around for himand will take a while to respond to a
http://www.vogue.com/1342841/apple-watch-first-look/http://www.vogue.com/2088983/apple-watch-october-2014-issue/


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question, smiling as he says, This is going to be a kind of

oblique answer. . . . We are talking in a white room,

distracted only by a black non-Apple televisionitself a

signpost to the question, When will Apple make TVs orwhatever will replace them? Noticeably, his phone neither

rings nor vibrates; he has designed the moment for

concentration. He nurses a white mug of tea, and the only

thing in the room besides an iPhone is the pair of reading

glasses designed by his friend Marc Newson and tucked

into the front of his T-shirt: simple, delicate, but clear and

strong. I wish I could articulate this more effectively, he

continues, addressing his ambitions as a designer. But it is

to have that sense that you know there couldnt possibly be

a sane or rational alternative.

Ive is obsessed over in design blogs, the sites that cover

Apple as if it were the Vatican, following leaks and rumors

and passing along hijacked photos of components orscreenspitching best guesses as to what Apple is working

on next. One blog imagines what it would be like if Jony

Ive designedwell, everything: Jony Ive redesigns . . .

freeway signage . . . Coke . . . the solar system. You might

spot the occasional photo of him out in the worldat the

White House for a design award; in London being knighted,as he was two years ago, by Princess Anne; at a pizza

dinner in San Francisco, sitting with Yahoos Marissa

Mayer and various Silicon Valley execs. But one of the very

natural settings for the real Jony Ive is a workshop at Apple

HQ.

It may be easier to sneak into a North Korean cabinetmeeting than into the Apple design studio, the place where


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a small group of people have all the tools and materials and

machinery necessary to develop things that are not yet

things. Reportedly Ives wife, Heather Pegg, has never been

he doesnt even tell her what hes working onand histwin sons, like all but a few Apple employees, are not

allowed in either. Work is conducted behind tinted

windows, serenaded by the teams beloved techno music, a

must for the boss. I find that when I write I need things to

be quiet, but when I design, I cant bear it if its quiet, he

says. Indeed, the design team is said to have followed an

unwritten rule to move away from their work whenever the

famously brusque Jobs entered the studio and turn up the

volume so as to make his criticisms less audible, less likely

to throw them off course.

In 1985, the year Jobs was forced out of Apple, Jony Ive

was in design school in England, struggling with

computers, blaming himself. Isnt that curious? he saysnow. Because if you tasted some food that you didnt think

tasted right, you would assume that the food was wrong.

But for some reason, its part of the human condition that if

we struggle to use something, we assume that the problem

resides with us.

Despite that initial obstacle, Ive seems to have been born tounderstand industrial design. He grew up in Chingford, on

the outskirts of London near Epping Forest, a good place

for a city kid who liked to play in the trees. His father,

Michael Ive, is a silversmith, and his grandfather was an

engineer. When Ive was a boy, his father worked with the

British government to develop and set the standards fordesign education. When he made things with his sona


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toboggan, sayhe would demand that Jony sketch his

design before commencing construction. As for the tree

house Ive designed back then, guess what? Today he is

critical. Id do it differently. His eyes light up as he saysit, and you fully believe, in that moment, that he would

happily drop everything to walk outside and work on it

now.

In high school, Ive studied sculpture and chemistry, and in

1985 he enrolled in the design program at Newcastle

Polytechnic, where he became known as passionately

detail-oriented, creating dozens of models of a hearing aid

to be used by deaf children and their teachers. By the time

he was out of school and working for a small design

consultancy (called, coincidentally, Tangerine), a project he

took on for Apple impressed the Cupertino company. They

recruited him in 1992.

Five years later, a disenchanted Ive was about to leavewhen Jobs returned to reboot the then-floundering Apple,

which happened, by most analyses, when Jobs enabled Ive.

By Ives account, the two hit it off immediately. It was

literally the meeting showing him what wed worked on,

Ive says, and we just clicked. Ive talks about feeling a

little apart, like Jobs. When you feel that the way youinterpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel

somewhat ostracized and lonelybig laugh hereand I

think that we both perceived the world in the same way.

Design critics now look back at the birth of the Jobs-Ive

partnership as the dawn of a golden age in product design,

when manufacturers began to understand that consumerswould pay more for craftsmanship. Together Jobs and Ive


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centered their work on the notion that computers did not

have to look as if they belonged in a room at NASA. The

candy-colored iMactheir first smash hitfelt to

consumers like a charming friend, revolutionary butapproachable, and appealed to both men and women. I

think what we sincerely try to do is create objects and

products and ideas that are new and innovative, says Ive,

but at the same time there is a slightly peculiar familiarity

to them.

The iMac was followed by laptops in cool brushed

titanium, then white laptops. Apple was treating computers

and media devices as tools, as more than just wires and

RAM shoved in a box; they were not so much minimal

devices as devices that coordinate functions. And then came

the iPod and the iPhone, an invention like a divining rod,

tapping into invisible streams of information.

Throughout, Ive has refined Apples design process, which,he argues, is almost abstract in its devotion to pure idea:

Good design creates the market; ideas are king. And heres

the next irony that defines Ives career: In the clutter of

contemporary culture, where hits and likes threaten to

overtake content in value, the purity of an idea takes on

increasing currency. I think now more than ever itsimportant to be clear, to be singular, he says, and to have

a perspective, one you didnt generate as the result of doing

a lot of focus groups. Developing concepts and creating

prototypes leads to fascinating conversations with his

team, says Ive. Its a process Ive been practicing for

decades, but I still have the same wonder.


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For someone whose influence on our lives is so huge,

responsible not just for shifting whole economies but for

changing the way we interact, Ive is extraordinarily low-

profile. Hes a virtually unknown British character whobecame a central person in the explosion of the Internet,

says his friend the Hong Kongborn businessman David

Tang. Its amazing that hes not more widely talked

about. On the Silicon Valley social circuit, hes an

anomaly. The technology industry tends to feature people

with big personalities who like to talk about their

achievements, says Trevor Traina, a fifth-generation San

Franciscan entrepreneur who is a friend and neighbor of the

Ives. Jony is humble and private, and he doesnt wear his

achievements on his sleeve.

Ive lives in the Pacific Heights neighborhood with his wife

and sons. Heather is a writer, he says. Shes a creative

too. We met at high school. I got married when I was 21,and Im 47. Married a long time. Isnt it cool? Their house,

bought two years ago for $17 million, is by the storied

architectural firm Polk & Co.Willis Polk oversaw the

design of San Franciscos Palace of Fine Arts, which

opened in 1915.

Like his own father, Ive seems adamant about intention athome. My boys are ten, and I like spending time with them

doing stuff that I did, which is drawing and making things

real things, not virtual things, he says. Easygoing Ive

morphs into Serious Ive on this point: He sees design

schools failing their students by moving away from a

foundation in traditional skills. I think its important thatwe learn how to draw and to make something and to do it


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directly, he says, to understand the properties youre

working with by manipulating them and transforming them

yourself.

Perhaps it is this drive to understand design with his ownhands that keeps Ive grounded. Hes not distracted by any

veneer of glamour, says Tang, who remarks on his friends

thoughtfulness. On a recent birthday, Tang received two

finely crafted wooden boxes containing large, engraved,

Ive-designed ashtraysTang loves cigarsconstructed

from the next-generation iPhone material. It was like

getting the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tang says.

Ive likes nothing better than to come up with mischievously

inventive ways to use the technology at his fingertips. When

a presenter fromBlue PeterBritains longest-running

childrens TV show, known for encouraging kids to craft

utilitarian designs from household objectscame to present

him with its highest honor, a goldBlue Peterbadgedepicting a ship in full sail, Ive was delighted. In

repayment, he fired up a Mikron HSM 600U, a computer-

controlled machine that can cut up a chunk of aluminum

like an origami flower, and in a mere ten hours created a

Blue Peterbadge that looked a lot like a not-so-distant

cousin of the MacBook Air.His attention to detail is famous among his friends. Traina

likes to joke with him that he couldnt imagine being Ives

contractor, since nothing would escape his notice. One

time I showed him a 1920s Cartier crystal, platinum, and

diamond pocket watch that had been my fathers, Traina

recalls. He took a quick look and later referred to the way


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the crystal was beveled, something I didnt even

remember.

Ives personal design tastes include the Castiglionis

Snoopy lamp and another Castiglioni thats a parabolicglass that sits quite low. He likes his suits custom-made by

British tailor Thomas Mahon, and might show up in one on

the charity circuitat the Mid-Winter Gala, for instance, at

a table with Marissa Mayer and Alexis and Trevor Traina;

the Ives also cochaired the benefit for Tipping Point

Community, an anti-poverty group in San Francisco. Ive

commutes what used to be 45 minutes and can now be an

hour and a half, no matter whether he is driving an Aston

Martin or a Bentley or a Land Rover, a fleet of cars that the

British press watches like Apples stock price. He takes a

vacation once in a while, often in London, setting up in a

suite at Claridges while his family visits with the family of

Marc Newson, the Australian designer who has remadeeverything from cars to furniture to restaurants to first-class

lounges for Qantas.

When he and Newson relax, they do so by attempting to

switch work offtough to do when you design the world

though designers out for a drink will inevitably allow the

poorly designed world to seep in. Shit we hate, saysNewson, includes American cars. Its as if a giant stuck his

straw in the exhaust pipe and inflated them, he adds,

when you look at the beautiful proportions in other cars

that have been lost. The two also relax working, as they

did recently on behalf of their mutual friend Bono, whose

recent auction of Ive- and Newson-curated goods raised$13 million for (Red), Bonos charity to stop AIDS. The list


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included Ettore Sottsasss Olivetti typewriter; a Dieter

Rams hi-fi (Rams himself showed up at New Yorks

Sothebys that Saturday night last fall); an Airstream trailer;

and a Leica that Newson and Ive lovingly tweaked together.We didnt even have to vocalize our pet hates, we were so

in tune, Newson says. We only have to look at the object

and look at each other and our eyes roll. Its a

collaboration that is now a lock, apparently, since Apple

recently announced that Newson would join Ives design

team to work on special projects.

Theyre a bit like non-identical twins separated at birth,

jokes Bono. They finish each others sentences. They

finish each others food, adds Bono. The kind of

emotional and physical attraction people develop with

Apple products shouldnt really be possible, but take a look

around you. Friends marvel as Ive shifts from the guy

cracking jokes to the solemn Sir Jonathan Ive. Jony isdeadly serious, says Bono, who first met Ive when Jobs

dispatched him to an Irish pub to salvage a U2Apple iPod

promotion. He is also serious fun to be around. When you

go out for a pint with Jony, its kind of like going for a pint

with the future, which is cool except you know hes not

telling you what theyve really got planned.Feels nice, doesnt it? On my second visit to Cupertino,

Ive has finally handed it over: the new Apple Watch. It is

more watch than the computer geeks would ever have

imagined, has more embedded software than in a Rolex

wearers wildest dreams. When Ive shows it to meweeks

before the products exhaustive launch, hosted by new CEOTim Cookin a situation room that has us surrounded by


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guards, it feels like a matter of national security. Yet despite

all the pressure, he really just wants you to touch it, to feel

it, to experience it as a thing. And if you comment on, say,

the weight of it, he nods. Because its real materials, hesays proudly. Then he wants you to feel the connections, the

magnets in the strap, the buckle, to witness the soft but

solid snap, which he just loves as an interaction with

design, a pure, tactile idea. Isnt that fantastic?

At the beginning of our sitdown, he is slightly flustered at

the attempt to condense all that went into the device into a

single conversation. Its strange when youve been

working on something for three years . . . he says, shaking

his head. He describes the trajectory of clocks to watches:

from a public clock in a Bavarian square to timepieces

owned by royalty, to military chronometers, to the watchs

arrival, only at the beginning of the twentieth century, on

the wrist. Its fascinating how people struggled withwearing this incredibly powerful technology personally.

The cell phone, of course, killed the watch to some extent.

Now he wants to reset the balance.

The Apple Watch is designed in three collections, with

myriad variations, from elegantly luxurious to a brightly

colored sporty version. On the back, LEDs emit lightthrough sapphire-crystal windows, and photodiodes convert

that light into a signal that algorithms use to calculate your

heart rate. Got that? All of this syncs with your iPhone,

making the watch the wrist-bound control tower of your life

in tech. Monitor your heart rate or your movement in

general. Tap to have Siri take a message, or send a voicereply. Pay for drinks with your wrist (Apple Pay will be,


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yes, Apple Watchcompatible). With this product, Apple is

moving from your desk and your pocket onto your person,

your pulse point.

The watch underscores the fact that Ive is first and foremosta masterly product designer; technology almost comes

second. Its a beautiful object, a device you might like even

if you dont like devices. Everything weve been trying to

do, he says, its that pursuit of the very pure and very

simple.

Aside from all the ways the watch connects to your phone,

Ive is very interested in how the watch can connect to

another human. You know how very often technology

tends to inhibit rather than enable more nuanced, subtle

communication? he asks. This is the question that haunts

the son of a craftsman: Is he making tools that improve the

world or shut people down? We spent a lot of time

working on this special mechanism inside, combined withthe built-in speaker he demonstrates on his wrist. You

can select a chosen person, also wearing the watch, and

transmit your pulse to them. You feel this very gentle tap,

he says, and you can feel my heartbeat. This is a very big

deal, I think. Its being able to communicate in a very gentle

way.Whether it is ultimately judged to be a big deal or another

distraction remains to be seen. Either way, Ive eventually

leaves the guarded room with his secrets intact for a few

more weeks, passing through the bright white corridors

decorated with long views of the Santa Cruz Mountains and

a poster-like portrait of Steve Jobs holding up a Mac during


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one of his famous hard sellsthe trademark bold product

introduction, the late CEOs big loud pitch.

As you watch Ive walk off, politely thanking people, you

recall that he closed up his private presentation by askingyou to listen closely to a watchband as it is pulled off and

then reconnected. You just press this button and it slides

off, and that is just gorgeous, he was saying. He

encouraged you to pause. But listen as it closes, he said.

It makes this fantastic k-chit. He was nearly whispering.

And when he said the wordfantastic,he said it softly and

slowlyfan-tas-tic!as if he never wanted it to end.

This is perhaps Ives greatest achievement: not that we can

get our email more readily, but that we can stop to notice a

small, quiet connection.

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A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive - The Man Behind the Apple Watch