“When Steven P. Jobs led Apple, he created a core principle for the company’s designers and engineers: stay fully focused on making great products,” Brian X. Chen and Matt Richtel report for The New York Times.
“That philosophy continues to guide Apple, even under its new chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, says Jonathan Ive, the company’s head of design,” Chen and Richtel report. “Mr. Ive, who rarely speaks publicly, said in an recent interview for an article about Apple under Mr. Cook that the company’s design processes remained unchanged, vibrant and healthy.”
A few snippets from Ive:
Often when I talk about what I do, making isn’t just this inevitable function tacked on at the end. The way we make our products is certainly equally as demanding and requires so much definition. I design and make. I can’t separate those two.
This is part of Steve’s legacy. Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing and making. Form and the material and process – they are beautifully intertwined – completely connected. Unless we understand a certain material — metal or resin and plastic — understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example – we can never develop and define form that’s appropriate.
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[Tim Cook and I] meet on average three times a week. Sometimes those meetings are over in his space, sometimes here in the design studio. We all see the same physical object. Something happens between what we objectively see and what we perceive it to be. That’s the definition of a designer – trying to somehow articulate what contributes to the way we see the object.
Heading on for two decades working with Tim, one of the things I have always admired is the quiet consideration he gives to trying to understand how he perceives something. He will take the time. I think that testifies to the fact that he knows it’s important.
Read more in the full interview here.
