I think that we're on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the '70s, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal.
— Jonathan Ive
We shouldn't be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.
Apple's Industrial Design team is harder to get into than the Illuminati, and part of the reason is because no one leaves. In the last 15 years, not one of the 18 designers has ditched Apple for greener pastures.
Eight years of work can be copied in six months. It wasn't inevitable that it was going to work. A stolen design is stolen time.
There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.
The best ideas start as conversations.
You learn a lot about vital corporations through non-vital corporations.
True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative.
The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.
The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design.
It never ceases to amaze me what it takes to develop and bring to mass production a product.
It's difficult to do something radically new, unless you are at the heart of a company.
When you're trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product.
There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.
People's interest is in the product, not in its authorship.
'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.
I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design.
Our goal is to desperately make the best products we can. We're not naive. We trust that if we're successful and we make good products, that people will like them. And we trust that if people like them, they'll buy them. And we figured out the operation and we're effective. We know what we're doing, so we'll make money, but it's a consequence.
To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.
What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive.
If something is not good enough, stop doing it.
At the start of the process the idea is just a thought - very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.
Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.
I left London in 1992, but I'm there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting.
If you are truly innovating, you don't have a prototype you can refer to.
Good is the enemy of great.
As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever I could get my hands on.
Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.
There's no other product that changes function like the computer.
The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.
I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.
Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.
When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.
I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making.
There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.
I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left.
We won't be different for different's sake. Different is easy... make it pink and fluffy! Better is harder. Making something different often has a marketing and corporate agenda.
It is sad that so many designers don't know how to make. CAD software can make a bad design look palatable! It is sad that four years can be spent on a 3D design course without making anything! People who are great at designing and making have a great advantage.
A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.
Why is it when we have a bad experience with a product, we assume it is us, but a bad experience with food, we blame the food?!
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.
One thing most people don't know is that Steve Jobs is an exceptional designer.
When you do everything to make the very best product, it also means you're very focused on just a few products.
Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.
Perhaps I'd like to design cars, but I don't think I'd be much good at it.
It's a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.
What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.
My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.
Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.
Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural - it's so hard!
