
Apple's Top Designer Explains Design - paulsb
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/comment/claire-beale/claire-beale-on-advertising-830554.html
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wensing
The amazing thing is that Apple (Steve Jobs?) succeeded in noticing this
talented individual and promoting him to a position where his designs could be
realized.

 _"With his dramatic return to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs began to revive
Apple’s fortunes and return it to the industry leader that it is today.
Jonathan Ive was instrumental to this turnaround, and under the new Jobs-led
Apple he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Industrial Design and began
a period of unrivaled creativity and innovation which continues to this day."_
<http://www.jonathanive.com/biography/>

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eugenejen
I think Steve Jobs noticed importance of production design during the time he
worked on Next. I remembered an old profile for him in Time sometime around he
going back to Apple. He criticized the design on laundry machines and used a
rare German laundry machine that's very quiet in his house.

I am a programmer myself and I know I don't have so much talent in design. I
noticed that at least in web industry before Web 2.0, web designers were
treated pretty badly by most management teams because they think designers
just need to type in some HTML code/cut and paste some photoshop and site is
done. What they don't understand is a good designer has to put himself/herself
into users' shoes and experiences it when they make design choice and a bad
choice will kill the site.

I am actually happy that at least now when you meet a management team that
ignores the importance of design, you can raise the popularity of good design
such as iPod, iPhone as counter point to persuade them that a good design
helps sales. In this part, I really appreciate what SJ and JI has been doing
for rest of us.

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michaelneale
" I noticed that at least in web industry before Web 2.0, web designers were
treated pretty badly by most management teams because they think designers
just need to type in some HTML code/cut and paste some photoshop and site is
done."

It wasn't just the managers - the general view was that design == graphic
design (nothing to do with usability). Plus graphic design students saw $$$
and suddenly went into web (I saw that a LOT, more so then any management
problem).

~~~
gaius
A lot of it was the designers themselves. I remember one who genuinely
believed "users like a challenge" and everything he came up with, from page
layouts to actual workflow was like a puzzle.

Fine, except we were working on corporate intranets. He didn't last long.

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inovica
I used to lecture at Northumbria where Ive studied. Everyone who knew him said
he was a really reserved and pleasant guy who just truly loved to design. I
think that Apples success lends itself substantially to this guy and his
creative skill. He's definitely up there with Steve Jobs for helping the re-
emergence of Apple

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eugenejen
What I like is this sentence from Jonathan, "We don't have to take this great
intuitive leap to understand the mythical concerns of our users, because we
are the users."

But I guess we also need to have taste.

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ComputerGuru
I know it's his name, but the OCD within makes me want to sed 's/Ive/I\'ve/g'

~~~
dreish
You can use it to your advantage at parties:

"Ive won two black pencils this year from D&AD!"

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Hexstream
"If you read the Jonathan Ive cuttings file not a big book, he rarely gives
interviews you'll find the same few scraps of information over and over:
Jonathan is shy, he's modest, he's private."

What?

~~~
jeroen
"If you read the Jonathan Ive cuttings file - not a big book, he rarely gives
interviews - you'll find the same few scraps of information over and over:
Jonathan is shy, he's modest, he's private."

It seems checking the results is no longer part of publishing.

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jasonkester
"D&AD, as you'll have read elsewhere in this paper, is one of the most
important dates in the creative industry calendar"

That's three paragraphs in, the fourth time that "D&AD" is used. It seems to
be the important point of the article, being referred to maybe 50 times, yet
the author never bothers defining it. WTF?

I'd never actually wished that there was a downmod button here before...

