“Jony Ive was promoted to become Apple’s Chief Design Officer yesterday,” Mic Wright reports for TNW. “That meant two relatively unfamiliar names were suddenly thrust into the spotlight: Alan Dye and Richard Howarth – who are now Apple’s Vice-Presidents of User Interface Design and Industrial Design, respectively.”
“But while Dye has been a relatively public presence – I profiled his rise from iPhone box designer to ruler of Apple’s UI design earlier today – his British colleague, Howarth is a different matter,” Wright reports. “Despite – or perhaps because of – being intimately involved in the creation of the iPhone from day one, named on numerous Apple hardware patents, and spending 20 years as part of Ive’s team, he’s very hard to pin down.
“A US Patent and Trademark Office search reveals 806 patents naming him as a co-inventor,” Wright reports. “They include every generation of the iPhone, the original MacBook Air (among other models), and a huge range of stands, covers, cords and accessories.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s industrial design remains, as it has been for many years, in very capable hands.