electro^plankton

The man responsible for Apple's product facelift is Jonathan Ive. Born in London in 1967, Ive studied art design at Newcastle Polytechnic before co-founding Tangerine, a design consultancy where he developed everything from power tools to televisions. In 1992, one of his clients - Apple - offered him a job at it's headquarters in Cupertino, California. Working closely with Steve Jobs, I've developed the iMac. Selling more than 2 million units in it's first year, the iMac transformed product design by introducing color, light and accessibility to a drab computing world. Everything Ive touches has won international design awards, from the original iMac to the Powerbooks to the iPod. With Ive's design aesthetic for functionality and beauty, he has helped catapult Apple past a computer name into a household brand. Everybody knows what Apple is. Although when you ask people to describe Apple, they are hard pressed to come up with the right words. However put them in an electronics store and it's easy for people to point out, "oh, that looks Apple."

"In the 1970's, Apple talked about being at the intersection of technology and the arts. I think that the product qualities are really consequent to the bigger goals that were established when the company was founded. The defining qualities are about use: easy and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significant way beyond traditional views of function."

One of the things that sets Apple apart is it's fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff. The obsessive attention to details that are overlooked like cables and power adapters. The iMac was a study on how to make it less exclusive and more accessible. For example, a handle was added and although it's primary function is to allow easy movement, a compelling part of it's function is the immediate connection it makes with the user by unambiguously referencing the hand. When you add a handle to something, it says to the person, "you can touch it, move me, I'm not that precious, I'm here for you."

I consider Jonathan Ive to be one of the most important industrial and product designers in the last decade. From his push to merge aesthetics with function, we've seen a new class of electronics that have spawned from the same design cores that he helped established at Apple. The best products not only serve us functionally but also elicit a visceral reaction. That's the kind of stuff that marks memories when we look back. Even if Apple is destined to go somewhere else, there's no doubt that Jonathan Ive was one of the men responsible for the phoenix rising in Cupertino, California.