Soft-spoken and shy, design guru Jonathan Ive, one of the key figures at Apple of California responsible for the striking design of iPhones, iPods, iPads, Macs and many other Apple products, flew to his native homeland of Britain to officially receive a knighthood in honor of his contributions to industrial design.
As Cody told you, he sat down for a rare one-on-one interview with The Daily Telegraph’s Shane Richmond, hinting that best work is underway now.
As for the knighthood ceremony, we have a video for your viewing pleasure…
It’s a pretty major recognition for the wonderful work this 45-year-old Briton has done during his 20-year career as Apple’s contract designer, initially, and head of the company’s industrial design department since 1997.
Here’s your video, depicting Sir Jonathan Ive of Apple being knighted by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace.
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I like how he flashed a smile, looks like he was having a good time.
Just last year, Britain recognized Ive’s “services to design and enterprise” with the title of Knight Commander of the British Empire.
If you haven’t yet, I wholeheartedly recommend you to check out Part One and Part Two of The Daily Telegraph’s interview with Ive.
My favorite quote from the interview explains how Apple products he and his team designed are meant to “speak to a set of values”.
What our products will not speak to is a schedule, what our products will not speak to is trying to respond to some corporate or competitive agenda. We’re very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.
I also love this quote explaining Apple’s focus on simplicity:
We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable. That leave you with the sense that that’s the only possible solution that makes sense Our products are tools and we don’t want design to get in the way. We’re trying to bring simplicity and clarity, we’re trying to order the products.
And make no mistake, Ive’s current projects are his “most important’ work”, meaning best is yet to come:
A lot does seem to come back to the fact that what we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about.
According to Walter Isaacson, Ive is hiding prototypes of a 50-inch Apple television set inside his design bunker in Cupertino where only a select few executives have access.
The top-secret facility holds “the future for the next three years”, the Briton told Isaacson.
Kudos to 9to5Mac for converting the original BBC clip into a YouTube-friendly format.
What did you think of the knighthood ceremony and this huge recognition for Ive’s work?
I wonder whether Samsung’s design head Lee Min-hyuk is watching the ceremony.
Perhaps he is coming to a realization that his otherwise top-notch work doesn’t necessarily make his company a “market leader in design”, as he put it.