granted only to a select few with authorized electronic passes; doors and windows are shaded behind black privacy glass. Even former CEO John Sculley was locked out of the design studio. “Talk about a pissed-off executive,” said Robert Brunner, the head of the design group at the time. 22
There’s very little personal space inside the studio. There are no cubicles or offices. The studio is a large open space with several communal design areas. It is full of expensive, state-of-the-art prototyping machines: 3D printers, powerful CAD (Computer Aided Design) workstations, and CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine tools. There’s also a massive sound system pumping out electronica all day, some of it sent from Ive’s friends back home in Britain. Ive is a confessed music nut, and a close friend of top techno DJ John Digweed.
When it comes to tools, no expense is spared. But instead of hiring more and more designers, Ive puts his resources into prototyping machinery. “By keeping the core team small and investing significantly in tools and process we can work with a level of collaboration that seems particularly rare,” Ive said. “In fact, the memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.” 23
The small, intimate team is key to being creative and productive, Ive says. He denies that Apple’s innovations came from one individual designer or another, but the team working together. It’s a process of “collectively learning stuff and getting better at what we do. One of the hallmarks of the team is inquisitiveness, being excited about being wrong because that means you’ve discovered something new.” 24
Whenever he talks about his work, Ive always emphasizes the team. He has no ego. After Digweed first met Ive, it took him months to discover what Ive’s real role was at Apple. “Jonathan was saying how they’d designed different things and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, my God. His work is used by creative people across the world every day but he has no ego about it.’ ” 25
Ive’s Design Process
Ive has often said that the simplicity of Apple’s designs is deceiving. To a lot of people, the products seem obvious. They are so plain and simple, there seems to be no “design” involved at all. There are no frills or accoutrements that trumpet the design process. But to Ive, that’s the point. The task, Ive said, is “to solve incredibly complex problems and make their resolution appear inevitable and incredibly simple, so you have no sense how difficult this thing was.” 26
The simplicity is the outcome of a design process characterized by generating a lot of ideas and then refining them—the same way the interface for OS X was designed. The process involves multiple teams at Apple, not just the designers. Engineers, programmers, and even marketers are also involved. Ive’s industrial designers are involved from the get-go of every project. “We get involved really early on,” said Ive. “There’s a very natural, consistent collaboration with Steve, with the hardware and software people. I think that’s one of the things that’s distinctive at Apple. When we’re developing ideas there’s not a final architecture established. I think it’s in those early stages when you’re still very open to exploration, that you find opportunities.” 27
To find these opportunities, Jobs assiduously avoids a serial, step-by-step design regime, where products are passed from one team to the next, and there’s little back and forth between the different departments. This is not always the case at other companies. Jobs has said it’s like seeing a cool prototype car at a car show, but when the production model appears four years later, it sucks. “And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! ... What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the
There’s very little personal space inside the studio. There are no cubicles or offices. The studio is a large open space with several communal design areas. It is full of expensive, state-of-the-art prototyping machines: 3D printers, powerful CAD (Computer Aided Design) workstations, and CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine tools. There’s also a massive sound system pumping out electronica all day, some of it sent from Ive’s friends back home in Britain. Ive is a confessed music nut, and a close friend of top techno DJ John Digweed.
When it comes to tools, no expense is spared. But instead of hiring more and more designers, Ive puts his resources into prototyping machinery. “By keeping the core team small and investing significantly in tools and process we can work with a level of collaboration that seems particularly rare,” Ive said. “In fact, the memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.” 23
The small, intimate team is key to being creative and productive, Ive says. He denies that Apple’s innovations came from one individual designer or another, but the team working together. It’s a process of “collectively learning stuff and getting better at what we do. One of the hallmarks of the team is inquisitiveness, being excited about being wrong because that means you’ve discovered something new.” 24
Whenever he talks about his work, Ive always emphasizes the team. He has no ego. After Digweed first met Ive, it took him months to discover what Ive’s real role was at Apple. “Jonathan was saying how they’d designed different things and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, my God. His work is used by creative people across the world every day but he has no ego about it.’ ” 25
Ive’s Design Process
Ive has often said that the simplicity of Apple’s designs is deceiving. To a lot of people, the products seem obvious. They are so plain and simple, there seems to be no “design” involved at all. There are no frills or accoutrements that trumpet the design process. But to Ive, that’s the point. The task, Ive said, is “to solve incredibly complex problems and make their resolution appear inevitable and incredibly simple, so you have no sense how difficult this thing was.” 26
The simplicity is the outcome of a design process characterized by generating a lot of ideas and then refining them—the same way the interface for OS X was designed. The process involves multiple teams at Apple, not just the designers. Engineers, programmers, and even marketers are also involved. Ive’s industrial designers are involved from the get-go of every project. “We get involved really early on,” said Ive. “There’s a very natural, consistent collaboration with Steve, with the hardware and software people. I think that’s one of the things that’s distinctive at Apple. When we’re developing ideas there’s not a final architecture established. I think it’s in those early stages when you’re still very open to exploration, that you find opportunities.” 27
To find these opportunities, Jobs assiduously avoids a serial, step-by-step design regime, where products are passed from one team to the next, and there’s little back and forth between the different departments. This is not always the case at other companies. Jobs has said it’s like seeing a cool prototype car at a car show, but when the production model appears four years later, it sucks. “And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! ... What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the
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