Hey guys, it’s Greg with Apple Explained,
and today we’re going to explore the history of Jonathan Ive. Where he came from, how he got involved in
product design, some of his career achievements, and how he ended up as Chief Design Officer
of the most valuable company in the world. This topic was the second place winner of
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which video you’d like to see next. So Jonathan Ive is a legendary designer who
was responsible for the look of some of the most iconic products like the iPod, iPhone,
iPad, and iMac. And although you may be very familiar with
the products he’s designed, you probably aren’t too familiar with the man himself,
since he’s known to be a private person who avoids media attention. But in this video we’ll cover what we do
know about Jonathan Ive, starting with his early years in the town of Chingford, London. His childhood circumstances were comfortable
but modest. His father, Michael John Ive, was a silversmith,
and his mother, Pamela Mary Ive, was a psychotherapist. They had a second child, Alison, two years
after their son’s birth. Jonathan Ive attended Chingford Foundation
School, later to be the alma mater of David Beckham. While in school, Ive was diagnosed with dyslexia,
but it never seriously effected his education. Ive was curious about the inner workings of
things throughout his childhood and was fascinated by how objects were put together. He would carefully dismantle radios and cassette
recorders, exploring how they were assembled and how the pieces fit. Although when he tried to put the equipment
back together again, he didn’t always succeed. In a 2003 interview conducted at London’s
Design Museum he said, “I remember always being interested in made objects. As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever
I could get my hands on. Later, this developed into more of an interest
in how they were made, how they worked, their form and material.” Although he recognized his passion quite early
in life, it took him some time to figure out what exactly he wanted to design. His interests ranged from furniture and jewelry
to cars and boats. Ive’s father took him on tours around London
design studios and design schools and young Jonathan Ive took a special interest in a
car design studio. He later looked into attending Central Saint
Martins College of Arts and Design in London, famous for their automotive design program. But Ive found the school to be a bad fit due
to the other students being, as he put it, “too weird” since they were making ‘vroom
vroom’ noises as they did their drawings. He looked elsewhere for a higher education
and eventually turned to Newcastle Polytechnic in the north of England, Ive decided product
design would become his specialty. It was during his college years when Ive further
developed his signature design style based on German Bauhaus tradition. This design philosophy embraced a minimalist
approach, where designers should only design what is needed. And these were the same principles followed
by former Braun designer Dieter Rams, and you can see similarities in the products each
of them have created. Ive also received several design awards throughout
his academic career, including the Pitney Bowes’ Walter Wheeler Attachment Award and
two scholarships from the RSA. After he graduated, Ive took a trip to silicon
valley to explore up-and-coming design studios in the Bay Area. He immediately fell in love with San Francisco
and hoped he would return there sometime in the future. But until then, Ive returned to London to
work for the Roberts Weaver Group, one of the top design firms in Britain at the time. Here, Jonathan Ive became friends with many
of his coworkers including Clive Grinyer, who quickly move on from RWG to join another
design firm and eventually start his own consultancy. But Ive remained at RWG and eventually experienced
some troubles with the company, mainly due to him being fresh out of college. First, they didn’t give him a substantial
raise that he requested even though his talents warranted it. Second, RWG declined a special request from
their client Ideal Standard to assign Jonathan Ive to their project. They rationalized the decision by saying they
had a studio of twelve designers and there was no way they could send a fresh graduate
like Ive to go and work with one of their clients. Jonathan Ive eventually left RWG out of frustration
and joined his old friend Grinyer’s design consultancy called Tangerine Design. And although Ive had more freedom over his
designs at Tangerine, they were often rejected by clients due to expense or deviation from
the company’s existing product line. Another problem was clients accepting Ive’s
designs, but reengineering them only to look half as good as it should have been. These rejections deeply frustrated Ive who
poured his heart and soul into each product he designed. But in fall of 1991, a visitor to Tangerine
Design would help change all of that for Jonathan Ive. His name was Bob Brunner, and he was scouting
Europe for outside design firms to work with Apple on a secret project called Juggernaut. And Brunner was determined to get Jonathan
Ive on board at Apple. At the time, Apple was being run by John Sculley
since Steve Jobs had been forced out six years prior. The desktop publishing revolution was putting
Macs in businesses all over the world and Apple had just celebrated its first quarter
earning two billion in revenue. With all this cash, Apple was expanding it
product lines and Sculley was investing heavily in R&D to speed up development of new products. Ive accepted a contract to consult on the
Juggernaut project, but he was still working under Tangerine Design. Apple wanted him to focus on developing mobile
devices like tablets and laptop hybrids. Ive went to work and produced something called
the “folio keyboard” that featured its own CPU, network jacks, and a trackpad. He also created a transportable desktop called
the Macintosh Workspace that had a built-in, pen-sensitive screen, along with a split keyboard
that folded underneath and to the sides when not in use. At the end of the project, Jonathan Ive and
the other designers at Tangerine had developed about twenty-five models that were reduced
down to four principle designs. Brunner was very impressed with Ive’s contributions
and thought his designs stood out because they weren’t based on anything that Apple,
or any other computer company, had done before. Now that’s quite an impressive amount of
talent considering Ive was just twenty-six at the time. Apple then flew him out to their Cupertino
headquarters to make a final presentation and a job offer. Brunner pulled Ive off to the side and said,
“If you really want to create something radical, you should come work for Apple full
time.” Ive agonized over the decision. He had enjoyed working with Apple, but wasn’t
sure if he wanted to leave both his homeland and his work at Tangerine. He also wasn’t sure whether his wife, Heather,
would want to move to the States. Now we all know he eventually took the job,
but what’s more interesting are the factors that influenced his decision. He appreciated that Apple offered a supportive
work environment where he could focus less on day-to-day business operations and more
on design as a craft. Also, he had become frustrated with consulting. Working outside a company made it difficult
to have a serious impact on product plans with true innovation. And finally, he got to live in San Francisco,
the city he had fallen in love with years earlier. In September 1992, at age twenty-seven, Ive
accepted a full-time position at Apple, and his first assignment was to redesign the Newton
MessagePad. The first version was a failure, but Apple
was hoping to change that with its second iteration. Ive worked tirelessly on the project and involved
himself in every last detail. Even traveling to Taiwan to fix manufacturing
problems. But no amount of effort from Ive was enough
to save the Newton. Apple had made marketing and engineering mistakes
that plagued the Newton until it was finally discontinued. So it may not have been a commercial success,
but Jonathan Ive’s Newton was a design success. It earned him four of the top awards in the
industry and the honor of being featured in the permanent collection of the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. Now during this time, Apple was experiencing
tremendous financial success and had more money than they knew what to do with. But just three years later in 1995, all of
that changed. Windows 95 was released and cheap PCs began
to fly off the shelves, undercutting the Mac. In the first quarter of 1996, Apple reported
a sixty-nine million dollar loss and laid off thirteen-hundred employees. This caused Apple’s focus to shift from
developing high-quality, well-designed Macs to pushing out the cheapest machines they
could possibly make. This was truly a period of no innovation at
Apple, and it destroyed Jonathan Ive’s moral. He said, “All they wanted from us designers
was a model of what something was supposed to look like on the outside, and then engineers
would make it as cheap as possible. I was about to quit.” But before he could, Jon Rubinstein, his new
boss, talked him out of it. Rubinstein gave Ive a raise and told him that
eventually the company would turn around and they’d have the opportunity to make history. And with Jobs return to Apple in 1997, Rubinstein
was exactly right. Jobs brought focus to not only the company
but also Ive’s design group. Because he was young and inexperienced as
a manager, Ive wasn’t exercising much discipline or leadership. It was creative chaos, with each designer
working on their own projects with virtually no coordination. Jobs refocused the design team and got them
working together on a new project called the Mac NC, which would later become the iMac. The team only had nine months to get it from
design to production. To meet this deadline, Ive implemented a radical,
integrated design process that transformed the way Apple developed its products. The workflow was so successful that it became
permanent, and it’s essentially the same system the design group uses today. So the iMac was released nine months later
and ended up being the best-selling Mac in Apple’s history up to that point. Jonathan Ive had finally found a company that
gave him the freedom to practice his craft effectively without limitations. In fact, part of Jobs reorganization of Apple
included giving the design team power over any other group, including engineering. And because Ive was head of design, he had
a tremendous amount of operational power at Apple, second only to Steve Jobs. Jonathan Ive went on to design almost every
hit product to Apple’s name. Including the iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple
Watch, and AirPods. But a fundamental problem with Ive has been
raised quite often, and that is, what will happen when he inevitably leaves Apple? A similar question was asked about Jobs before
he passed, but Ive’s circumstances are quite different. It’s his hands, heart, and mind that are
directly designing these products. And no one is quite sure whether his unmatched
talent can be passed down to other members of the design team. But I’m confident that if any company could
figure out a way around that obstacle, it’s Apple. So that is the history of Jonathan Ive, and
if you want to vote for the next video topic, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next
time.
