Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

by Kahney, Leander

  At school, Jony’s skills as a designer were beginning to emerge. A school friend and fellow design student, Jeremy Dunn, remembered a clever clock that Jony produced. Matte black, with black hands and no numbers, the design allowed the timepiece to be mounted in any orientation. Though made of wood, the clock’s black finish was so flawless his friends couldn’t tell what it was made from.15

  With the possibility of university studies looming, Jony began to prepare for A-levels, the standardized qualification tests for university admission in the United Kingdom. His primary emphasis would be design technology, then a two-year combined course. In the first year, students explored the character and capabilities of different materials, ranging from wood and metal to plastics and fabrics, almost any material. The idea was to give students the opportunity to develop ideas and learn practical skills before the second year, which was more academic, and centered on a major project.

  “It was very hands on,” recalled Craig Mounsey, a designer who took the course at the same time as Jony. “We were being taught execution skills and at the same time design process skills.”16

  Jony’s work was exceptional and his drawing excellent. His teachers recalled that they had not seen his standard in another student of his age before; even at age seventeen, his designs were often production ready. “His graphics were brilliant,” said Dave Whiting, a faculty member who taught Jony design and technology for several years. “He used to draw initial designs on brown craft paper with white and black pens, which was a really effective and new way to do that. He had a different way of presenting ideas. His ideas were novel, innovative, fresh.”17

  “Jony was so good,” Whiting added, “we learned a lot from him, through looking at his work.”

  Not only was Jony skilled at the crafts side, he was exceptionally good at communicating his ideas. “He did things that other people weren’t doing,” said Whiting. “When you are a designer, you have to be able to convey your ideas to people who are not designers; perhaps they are financing you or going to do the production, and you have to be able to turn them on to the product and its feasibility. Jony was able to do that.”

  His teachers recognized how sophisticated his work was, and some of Jony’s drawings and paintings were hung in the head teacher’s office. “They depicted parts of churches, arches and details of tumbling-down churches and ruins, which were very accurate pencil sketches, as well as watercolors,” said Whiting. When the head teacher’s office was redecorated some time during the late 1980s, the sketches disappeared, but people remembered his skills. “I have heard Jony say that he is not good at drawing,” Whiting said in an interview, “but that’s not true.

  “Jony saw, even in the early days, the importance of line and detail in products. For instance, he designed some mobile phones that were slim and detailed, like modern phones, even while he was still a school student.” Jony’s interest in phones was not just adolescent tinkering. He would continue to design new phones through his later schooling (and, of course, at Apple).

  For his second-year project, Jony chose to design an overhead projector (OHP). DT students were required to produce initial ideas, refine them, make presentation drawings and mock-up models and, if possible, build the actual product. The task was more than a theoretical exercise on paper: It was a complete design process, concept to completion.

  The project also required market research. Jony knew that OHPs were standard issue at schools and businesses at the time. They sat on teachers’ desks, projecting images of transparent slides onto walls and whiteboards. The ubiquitous machines were all big and bulky, but Jony, having researched the OHP market, decided there was an opening for a portable model.

  He designed a light OHP that would collapse into a matte black briefcase with lime green fittings. Highly portable, it was very modern looking—and quite unlike the clunky, utilitarian desktop OHPs of the day. When the lid of the case was opened, it revealed a Fresnel lens with a magnifying glass and a light underneath. As with traditional OHPs, transparent film images placed on the screen were then projected via a series of mirrors and a magnifying lens onto the wall.

  Ralph Tabberer, a teacher friend of Mike Ive’s, recalled being impressed when he saw the portable OHP for the first time. “Its hydraulics were so well put together, that it folded out almost with a sigh. I could see the incipient talent that was coming out of Jonathan.”

  The teachers at Walton liked Jony’s project and decided to enter it, along with those of a few other students, into a national competition. That year, the Young Engineer of the Year Award, sponsored by the British Design Council, was to be judged by the internationally famous architect and interior designer Terence Conran. For the first round, the entrants submitted graphics, drawings and photographs. The most interesting designs were then chosen for the next stage of the competition.

  Jony’s portable OHP project was among those selected for round two. Before sending his OHP for the next stage of judging, Jony took it apart for a final clean and polish. When he put it back together, however, he inadvertently inserted the lens backward. As a result, instead of projecting a clear image, the inverted Fresnel lens sprayed light in all directions, rendering the image indistinguishable. As submitted, the device was useless, and the judges rejected Jony’s design. Still, his idea was certainly unique: Though he didn’t win, a not-dissimilar portable OHP hit the market not long afterward.

  A Rare Sponsorship

  At sixteen, Jony’s talent was already beginning to gain the attention of the design world.

  Philip J. Gray, the managing director of London’s leading design firm, Roberts Weaver Group, spotted Jony’s work at a teachers’ conference.

  As Her Majesty’s chief inspector for design, Mike Ive organized what became an annual conference to promote design in the national curriculum. When Phil Gray arrived to be the event’s keynote speaker, he laid eyes on Jony’s work for the first time.

  In the conference foyer a small exhibition of design work by high school students had been installed. Among the work on display were some pieces by Jony. Gray was drawn immediately to Jony’s sketches of toothbrushes. Much later, Gray recalled the “fine lines in pencil and crayon,” and “the quality of thinking and analysis” evident in the work of the young design student.

  “His work stood out as being very mature for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old,” Gray said. “I remarked what an extraordinary talent. Mike replied, ‘That’s nice because that was done by my son Jony.’”18

  A few days later, father and son visited Gray at the Roberts Weaver Group offices in central London. Over lunch, Gray gave the Ives some advice about the best colleges for ID. “I made a few recommendations,” Gray recalled. His top recommendation was Newcastle Polytechnic.

  During lunch, Mike Ive also asked a cheeky question: Would Gray’s company sponsor Jony though college? In return for an annual stipend (about £1,500 for each of four years), Jony would promise to work for the design firm after graduation. Sponsoring was very unusual at the time, but Gray agreed.

  “Jony is the only person I sponsored at RWG,” Gray said. “We had interns, who came to work with us during summer breaks from university—but Jony was the only student we sponsored. . . . I had no problem persuading the other directors at RWG to sponsor Jony, because he had shown some clear talent.”

  Although it might appear that Mike Ive was driving his son to pursue a career in design, Gray didn’t believe that was the case. He thought Mike was just responding to his son’s growing obsession with design. “Mike used his position to be able to rub shoulders with the design elite and he hoped that some of that would rub off on Jony,” Gray allowed, adding that Jony “was a very smart engineer. . . . Father and son were both very enthusiastic. A liking for design was just in the family.”19

  In the years that followed, Gray had more opportunities to observe father and son. “They were so alike; shy but very focuse
d and [they] always got things done without fuss,” he said. “I never recall raised voices! My memories are mostly of smiles and the pleasure of being with them rather than raucous laughter. Mike’s pride was there to see but never spoken about. It’s unusual but talent and modesty can go together.”

  His father’s influence was evident in Jony’s temperament as well as in their shared love of design. “Mike Ive was a real enthusiast who always loved what he did,” said Gray. “He was a really energetic person and desperately keen for his son to succeed. He was simply a caring father who tried to make sure that Jony had all the best opportunities to get on as a designer.”

  In his years at Walton High School, Jony opted to study not only design technology at an advanced level but also chemistry and physics, which was unusual for an arts-oriented student. When he graduated from Walton High School in 1985, he did so with an A in each of his three A-level exams. The hard work of two years of preparation paid off, as earning three top grades wasn’t easy: According to UK government statistics, his results put him in the top 12 percent of students nationwide.20

  These grades made him eligible to apply for Oxford or Cambridge, the best known of the UK universities. Having been interested in studying to be a car designer, he also considered Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, one of the world’s leading art and design schools. But when he visited, the place didn’t seem to be a good fit. Jony found the other students “too weird,” as he put it. “They were making ‘vroom, vroom’ noises as they did their drawings.”21

  With his academic record and evident talents, Jony had choices. In the end, he did as Phil Gray had advised and opted for Newcastle Polytechnic in the north of England. Product design was to be his main thing.

  CHAPTER 2

  A British Design Education

  There is a notion in Britain of a T-shaped designer: one with depth of discipline in a single area but also a breadth of empathy for other areas of design.

  —PROFESSOR ALEX MILTON

  Renowned for its beer (Newcastle Brown Ale), football team (the Newcastle United Football Club), and horrible weather, Jony’s new home was a vibrant, industrial port city. When he arrived at the city on the River Tyne, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ran the country, and the mainstays of the city’s economy, shipbuilding and coal, were in decline.

  Despite the rain and Mrs. Thatcher (she’d been really hard on the miners), Newcastle, located near England’s northeast coast, had a reputation as a party town. Roughly a sixth of the city’s inhabitants were students and the city center was home to many bars and nightclubs. In 1985, Jony’s first year in university, the British music scene was as lively as ever, especially in the North, where bands like The Smiths and New Order gained national attention. Within a couple of years, the city’s nightclubs would be host to the rave scene, awash with cheap ecstasy and thumping to the dynamic electronic dance music that Jony came to love.

  Now known as Northumbria University, Newcastle Polytechnic was (and still is) regarded as the top college in the United Kingdom for ID. These days, the design school has about 120 staff and admits about 1,600 students from more than 65 countries.1 The department, then and now, is housed in a tall building called Squires Building. “It was a rather brutal big building but was a great place for creativity in general,” said David Tonge. “It was shared with fine art, fashion and craft just over the corridor. This was before industrial design had become fashionable.”2

  Each floor of the building is dedicated to a different design discipline: ID, furniture design, fashion, graphic design and animation. The department is well equipped with lots of tools and technology. “The designers are able to use a range of materials—wood, paper, plastic, metal, leather, kevlar, cotton, you name it,” said Professor Paul Rodgers, who lectures on design at Northumbria, though he didn’t teach Jony. “They have access to all these machines—drilling, sawing, fastening, stitching, etching, burning, you name it. And they receive really good training in those workshops, backed by a technical staff.”3

  The ID department at Newcastle, founded in 1953, gained recognition in the sixties, in part because of its close ties to British industry. According to another alumnus, Craig Mounsey, who completed the course a year before Jony, “Newcastle had the reputation for being the best. . . . They won everything. All of the design teachers at school would parade the work from Newcastle as being the standard.”4 Mounsey himself has gone on to become CEO of CMD, one of Australia’s leading design studios.

  The quality of the student body was another reason for Newcastle’s high standing. According to Mounsey, prospective students had just a one in ten chance of gaining admission to Newcastle Polytechnic. In 1984, 250 applicants vied for just 25 places. “We were effectively the cream at the very top of the new wave of school-curriculum-trained designers,” said Mounsey. “It was humbling.”

  The first year at Newcastle was split between learning practical skills and academic classes, with a focus on design psychology. “The first year is a rapid upskilling program,” explained Rodgers.

  “Students were taught how to think like a designer. One of the first projects was to design two rooms using nothing but several simple geometric shapes: a sphere, cube, tetrahedron and a cone. We had to create one room which would invite the user in and make them feel like they would never want to leave,” recalled Mounsey. “The other had to be intimidating and be a place you would want to leave. Polar opposites.” The most important part of the project was a report justifying the student’s decisions. “The first year was all about thinking, research and abstract design language,” said Mounsey.

  Students were also required to master hands-on design skills, an emphasis that has continued to this day with the school’s focus on project-based learning. Students at Northumbria traditionally spend a lot of time learning how to make things. They are taught how to sketch and draw; and how to operate drills, lathes and computer-controlled cutting machines. They are also given time and freedom to experiment with some of the materials and resources in the school and develop a really deep understanding of what they can do with materials. Throughout this time, the emphasis is on creating and making.

  “It’s no nonsense,” said Professor Rodgers. “We teach the fundamentals. There’s lots of emphasis placed . . . on the manipulation of materials.”

  Another key part of the program is the requirement that students complete two “placements”—in effect, internships—with outside companies. During the middle two years of the four-year program, all the students work in placements in the second and third years. This academic structure is known as a “sandwich” course.5 While many technical colleges offer placements, most require just one. Northumbria attracts some of the most talented students in the country because of this double-sandwich course structure. Students have taken placements with Phillips, Kenwood, Puma, Lego, Alpine Electronics and Electrolux, among many others, or were placed with design firms and consultancies, including Seymour Powell, Octo Design and DCA Design International.6

  The program was the same in Jony’s time. “It was unusual,” said David Tonge, one of Jony’s classmates and a close friend. “[The placements] made you much smarter and wiser when you returned. The cumulative effect of everyone doing this and bringing experiences back is huge. Effectively you leave the course with a year or so experience . . . Of course, it’s a big leap over other graduates [from other universities].”

  The rigor of the coursework and placements give the graduates an advantage in both craftsmanship and the discipline of ID. According to Professor Rogers, “When you look at a Northumbria project and compare it to another institution in the UK, the attention to detail and the making of the artifact is always very, very strong. The things themselves . . . are made to a very high level of detail.”

  The contrast to Goldsmiths, the famous arts and humanities college in London, is illuminating. Goldsmiths is well known for foster
ing a generation of high-profile British artists called collectively the Young British Artists (YBAs), including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.7 The YBAs are famous for stirring up controversy and provoking outrage. Hirst pickled dead sharks in formaldehyde and Emin created an art-gallery installation of her unmade bed, which included a used condom.

  Based in New Cross in south London, Goldsmiths is big city, intellectual, and artistic to a fault. In comparison, Newcastle is blue collar, brass tacks, and a get-your-hands-dirty-making-things kind of place. “At Goldsmiths, the focus is on the idea, the concept,” said a Northumbria professor, who asked not to be named. “Northumbria focuses on the object, the artifact. I think, being rather crude here, the focus of the Northumbria graduate is on the detail, and the manufacture and the craftsmanship of producing the object; and a Goldsmith’s student would be much more about interrogating a notional product, from a particular conceptual, contextual point of view. In my crude comparison, the Goldsmiths student thinks a lot about what they are doing, whereas the Northumbria student gets on and does it.”

  The design education Jony encountered at Newcastle was based on a Germanic approach, according to Professor Penny Sparke, pro vice chancellor at Kingston University and a writer about design. “The German Bauhaus of the 1920s was picked up by British design education in the 1950s,” she said. “For example, they had what was called a foundation year in Bauhaus, and British design also has a foundation year. The idea of the foundation year was that students started from scratch; they did not build on the past but started on an empty page.8

  The minimalist principle that designers should only design what is needed also was derived from the German pedagogic tradition. And Ive’s design philosophy seems very conscious of that. Both Ive and Braun came out of the same Bauhaus tradition, as have lots of German companies such as kitchen equipment companies, electronics companies—it is quite established in the technological end of German design. There is a vein of high quality, high technology and minimalism. Ive probably imbibed these influences through his education.”