The low-tech ambitions of Apple’s design guru, Sir Jony Ive

“Last week I got the chance to interview Jonathan ‘Jony’ Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, at a conference organised by the Norman Foster Foundation. If he could pick any futuristic product, I asked him, what he would like to design?” Gillian Tett reports for Financial Times. “‘A soap dispenser,’ he replied, quick as a flash. ‘A soap dispenser?’ I repeated, slightly baffled.”

“Ive is rumoured to harbour all manner of futuristic design ambitions, with an appetite for aerospace, self-driving cars and a mysterious project known as “Airbug” (none of which he will discuss in public),” Tett reports. “So why, I wondered, would he care about something as humble and retro as a soap dispenser? Why not pick something more cutting edge?”

“Ive wriggled in his seat and explained that he passionately believed that the whole point of design was to celebrate ‘being human,'” Tett reports. “That required creating objects that appear to be breathtakingly simple but solve key problems — such as how to wash our hands — in a powerful and beautiful way. ‘There aren’t any good soap dispensers,’ he explained. He is now on a quest to find or create one, thus solving a problem that ‘really bothers’ him.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: He’s right. We’d buy that soap dispenser!

The best one we’ve found, and it’s for hand sanitizer, not soap, is the PURELL Touch Free Dispenser. It’s not much to look at, but it works well, at least.

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Royal College of Art in London appoints Apple’s Jony Ive as its Chancellor – May 25, 2017
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Jony Ive hasn’t been given too much power at Apple – because he’s always had it – February 5, 2013
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