An in-depth look at the man behind Apple's design magic
But the headliner of the show made a decidedly less showy impression. Shambling onto the stage with a nearly shaved head and dark T-shirt, Apple Computer Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design Jonathan Ive looked like grad student who had gotten lost on the way to Starbucks. The 39-year-old Brit slouched unfabulously in his seat and quietly answered questions from conference host and award-winning editor, Chee Pearlman. Despite countless invitations, he refused to trumpet his own design prowess or to dish on what it's like to work with his perfectionist boss, Steve Jobs.
The man who, after Jobs, is most responsible for Apple's amazing ability to dazzle and delight with its famous products, chose instead to talk about process -- what he called "the craft of design." He spoke passionately about his small team and how they work together. He talked about focusing on only what is important and limiting the number of projects. He spoke about having a deep understanding of how a product is made: its materials, its tooling, its purpose. Mostly, he focused on the need to care deeply about the work.
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Yet Ive's interview onstage revealed what many people close to the company say is indisputable -- that he is Apple's Man Behind the Curtain. While Jobs sets the direction and provides the inspiration, Ive melds Apple's unique creativity with the nuts-and-bolts required to make beautiful things. Apple's innovation success is due greatly to this alchemy between chief designer and powerful boss. "I think Steve Jobs has found somebody in Jony who knows how to complete or even exceed his vision, and do it time and time again," says Pearlman
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But if Jobs is the public keeper of Apple's design zeitgeist, then Ive is the private leader of its talented design team. "Apple is a cult, and Apple's design team is an even more intense version of a cult," notes Riley. Actually, it's not a big cult -- just a dozen people or so. But they operate at an extremely high level, both individually and as a group. Ive has said that many Apple products were dreamed up while eating pizza in the small kitchen at the team's design studio.
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The team, made up of thirty- and fortysomethings, has a definite international flair. Members include not only the British Ive but also New Zealander Danny Coster, Italian Daniele De Iuliis, and German Rico Zörkendörfer. "Its good old-fashioned camaraderie -- everyone with the same aim, no egos involved," says British fashion designer Paul Smith, a friend since the late 1990s when Ive sent him a new iMac. "They have lots of dinners together, take lots of field trips. And they've turned these gray frumpy objects called computers into desirable pieces of sculpture you'd want even if you didn't use them."
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Ive invests his design dollars in state-of-the-art prototyping equipment, not large numbers of people. And his design process revolves around intense iteration -- making and remaking models to visualize new concepts. "One of the hallmarks of the team I think is this sense of looking to be wrong," said Ive at Radical Craft. "It's the inquisitiveness, the sense of exploration. It's about being excited to be wrong because then you've discovered something new."
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The design group was able to figure out how to put a layer of clear plastic over the white or black core of an iPod, giving it a tremendous depth of texture, and still be able to build each unit in just seconds. "Apple innovates in big ways and small ways, and if they don't get it right, they innovate again," says frog design founder Hartmut Esslinger, who designed many of the original Apple computers for Jobs. "It is the only tech company that does this."
What does this mean for the long list of companies now trying to lift their own design games, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft? They have some reason to hope. As long as Apple focuses on so few products and relies so heavily on so few individuals, it can address only so many markets. "Apple doesn't have a model that scales," insists HP design chief Sam Lucente. And, barring any new breakthroughs on Sept. 12, Apple's current visual vibe -- white boxes -- is now five years old and getting predictable.
Yet most big corporations have neither the focus, the skills, nor the appetite for risk to build mass-produced products that feel as if they were made by high-priced boutiques in New York or London. While computer companies have focused on pinching pennies these past few decades, Apple has been perfecting its design game. The fact that rivals are now talking about design is not proof they're catching up -- but of how far they have to go.
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What really sets Apple's products apart is the "fit and finish," the ultimate impression that results from thousands of tiny decisions that go into a product's development. Take Apple's pioneering work in injection molding. It's part science, part art, and plenty of trial and error. The process involves figuring out how to inject molten plastic or metal through tiny "feed lines" into an irregularly shaped cavity, and then having just the right amount of holes so that it cools to a blemish-free perfection in seconds.
Ive's team understands and respects this process of production so much that toolmakers and suppliers in Asia prefer working with them -- despite the fact that Apple is a ferocious negotiator on cost. Suppliers get a jump on the future by working with Apple, since it is setting the design pace.
