Design & Desire in the Twentieth Century

Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, has been awarded Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the New Year Honor’s list, as reported by BBC News. Ive is responsible for the design of Apple’s iMac, iPhone and iPad, among many other products.

According to BBC News, “The knighthood is the second time Mr. Ive has been recognized in the honor’s list. In 2005 he was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE).”

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Jonathan Ive with a MacBook Pro, circa 2010. Photographer unknown.
Source: http://flipter.com/media/photos/Jonathan_Ives.jpg

“With technology, the function is much more abstract to users, so the product’s meaning is almost entirely defined by the designer.” –Jonathan Ive

Background: In the Land of Beige Boxes
In the 1980s desktop computers were for the most part designed by engineers, and they looked it. During the 1990s desktop computers started to appear on desktops in companies across the world, but they all looked relatively indistinguishable – as generic beige boxes.

A Personal Computer in Every Home
In the late 1990s Apple Computer’s CEO, Steve Jobs, had a plan to bring the personal computer from the office into the home by selling desktop computers to consumers. His vision was a personal computer in every home. The challenge was how to interest the average consumer; how to make people want a Macintosh. Who would get excited about a buying a beige box?

Hello iMac
Then in 1998 Apple introduced the iMac. It looked like no other personal computer.

“The iMac changed the way consumers thought about personal computers and about Apple itself. It gave Apple a vital boost that helped it usher in a new era of consumer electronics that were quirky, fun and colorful….People snapped up 150,000 of them in the first weekend following its release. Apple sold 800,000 iMacs by the end of the year.” ¹

But who designed the iMac? Who gave form to Steve Jobs’ vision? The designer who changed the way we use and think about technology is Jonathan Ive.

Jonathan Ive, Apple iMac (1998).
Source: http://richworks.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/apple_imac_g3.jpg

Who Is Jonathan Ive?

Forty-four year old Jonathan Ive was born in London and grew up in a middle-class family in Essex, UK. He went on to study design at Newcastle Polytechnic in the mid-1980s. As a student there he had won awards for student design from the Royal Society of Arts.² “By the time he graduated, Ive was already something of a legend in British design circles.”³ After graduation he worked for Tangerine Design in London, but left a few years later for California to join Apple in 1992.³

Ive at Apple
Apple was experiencing hard economic times during Ive’s early years there.  The company was “hemorrhaging money and market share;…it was the whipping boy of Wall Street and the business press.”³  At that time Ive was torn between his desire to maintain design innovation and the need to appease corporate cost cutters. Furthermore, Ive was turning out good work during those years but became frustrated at the lack of attention given to his projects.³

In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to take control of the company he had founded, and everything turned around for Ive. According to author Donald A. Norman, “Jobs said: ‘This is the direction we’re going,’ and he unleashed Jonathan to make it happen.”² The early working relationship between the two men, however, did have a rocky start. Jobs legendarily could be a tyrant and not always the easiest person to work with. Valarie Sobolewski, a long time software engineer at Apple recalled, “Jonathan took his share of beatings early on.”²

Jonathan Ive showing off a MacBook Pro, circa 2010.

Jobs, however, recognized Ive’s genius and soon named him Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design.¹ Ive would lead Apple’s design team to develop the Powerbook, iPod, iPhone and iPad, products that revolutionized not only the communications and music industries, but also the way people interact with technology.

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3. Good design is aesthetic

The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

Braun LE1 Electrostatic Loud Speaker, based on a speaker designed by Peter J. Walker, was introduced by Braun in 1960. Rams was asked to design a case that would “match the special styling of the Braun products” (1). Unfortunately the speaker lacked deep bass that was so popular among rock n’ roll enthusiasts. This, along with its high cost of manufacturing the LE1 led to its quick demise.  “In the early 1960s the Braun Company cancelled the production of the LE1, and in 1990 the complete production line of audio products came to an end” (1).

Rams’ design of the Braun LE1 continues to influence today’s designers as many observers have noted the similarity between the design of the LE1 and Jonathan Ive’s Apple iMac.

Dieter Rams, Braun LE1 Electrostatic Loud Speaker, (1960)
Source: http://designmuseum.org/media/item/4824/-1/103_3Lg.jpg

Jonathan Ive, Apple iMac, (2007)

Source: http://thehottestgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/apple_imac.png

Reference
1. One Thing Audio (n.d.). Quad ESL 57, Modifications, Other manufacturers using the Quad ESL 57. Retrieved from: http://www.onethingaudio.net/FOR/QUA/57/9512-QUA-57-MOD-OTH.htm