I’m on the outskirts of Cupertino in California, visiting a gargantuan building that looks like a spaceship: a newly built, glass-walled office that has recently become home to the £650 billion Apple empire. There’s also a 175-acre campus with a forest of drought-resistant trees that, they tell me, are designed to encourage morning jogs, a 100,000sq ft wellness centre and a canteen where you can place your lunch order using iPads and facial recog-ni-tion. Everything here is custom-made: even the pizza boxes are engineered to prevent the crusts from going soggy. It might have cost £3.6 billion, but as I head to the canteen for a very special audience, Apple Park looks exactly like the friendly face of a tech revolution – after all, that’s what has made it the most valuable brand in the world.
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The architect of the Apple universe is Jony Ive: a 51-year-old industrial designer from Essex, who has become a part of every Apple consumer’s life. He joined the company in 1992, rising to his current position as chief design officer in 2015. He is the man who encouraged Steve Jobs to turn everything white; who developed the touch-sensitive swipe screen; who designed the iPod, the iPhone, the iMac. His brilliant eye has overseen all the elements of every Apple device, which probably makes Jony one of the most influential figures on earth, whose power now goes beyond smartphones into the worlds of fashion, art, commerce and politics. He’s likely to be spoken of in the same breath as design greats such as Azzedine Alaïa or Zaha Hadid, but I’ve always felt the most amazing thing about Jony is that he’s so normal: friendly, without airs and graces, and actually a bit shy. Yet, to appropriate the Apple lexicon, he is a genius. Here’s what happened when I sat down with Jony in the Cupertino canteen to talk about his incredible career and the power of seeing things differently.
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Naomi Campbell: I’d like to start at the beginning – what did you want to do when you were growing up?
Jony Ive: Well, I always liked drawing and making things. The reason I would draw was to help me make something – not drawing for its own sake, but as a means to an end. I later found out that was called design.
N: And did your parents encourage you?
J: My father was a really good craftsman – he was a silversmith – so I grew up understanding how things were made. That’s something that’s easy to take for granted, but everything that has been made has been thought about, designed, and I think that growing up with an appreciation of the nature of objects was hugely influential to me.
N: What was school life like? Were you a high achiever?
J: I wasn’t very good at anything else, but I was competent at drawing and making: it’s where my heart was, what I loved. Ironically, not being very good at other things helped me focus. I think I was fortunate in that I found not only what I loved to do early on, but also what I was able to do.
N: So were you a good boy?
J: I was very quiet, because I was – and remain – very shy. One of the things about drawing and making is that it can be a very solitary thing… I don’t know if one reinforced the other, but it felt comfortable to do because I could do it by myself.
N: What do you do to overcome your shyness?
J: Avoid people! My area of focus is quite deep, but it’s not very broad. I’m just aware of the things I can do and I’m very aware of the majority of stuff, which is what I can’t do.
N: Are there any examples of design from your childhood that stand out? What was the first thing you ever made that you were proud of?
J: Aged around 10 or 11, I liked making very simple things from card. I remember making a box with a lid, and trying to do it as perfectly as I possibly could: making and remaking it, being completely unforgiving with the result. But it wasn’t really about the object – it was about the process and seeing if I could make something perfectly.
N: So how many did you make?
J: Half a dozen? That’s a lot of boxes.
N: What is it about objects that interests you? Is it the way people use them; how they can make people feel?
J: You and I might see the same things, but what they mean to us is based on so many historical and cultural references. There isn’t this universal truth to a single object. I was interested in how you go from what you see to what you perceive, what something might mean to you.
N: Your relationship with Steve Jobs is often talked about as the ultimate creative partnership. What was it like when you met? What did you have in common?
J: We looked at the world in the same way: we’d struggle to perceive things, we’d argue in our own heads, and we were very conscious about the conclusions we came to. We started working together in 1997, and he was just remarkable. As time goes on, I appreciate him more, and miss him more; how truly extraordinary he was becomes clearer. Steve understood the creative process in a way that’s extremely rare, but he also understood how you make a company with lots of people.
N: And what did you learn from him? Are there any ways that he worked that continue to inspire you?
J: There was an incredible liberty in the way he would think. He wouldn’t obey rules that were perceived to be accepted wisdom, and he had an extraordinary optimism and enthusiasm. He was so inquisitive – and very supportive of me.
N: How involved are you in the manufacturing process? I heard a rumour that you slept on factory floors when you were making the first iPhone…
J: One of the key characteristics of how we work is that we’re very involved in how you make some-thing: you can’t just design in abstract and then tell someone else to make it. You know that from the fashion designers whose work you love: they are there for every step. I’ve stayed for months in places where we make products. I don’t know how you can be an effective designer and not do that.
N: Everything you work on is kept top secret – is it hard not discussing what you’re up to?
J: I don’t really see it as being secretive – if I’m working on something and it’s not finished, I don’t want to show somebody! One of the defining things about the nature of ideas is just how fragile they are: when you’re not sure whether some-thing is going to work, the idea is vulnerable. Part of protecting the idea is to be careful about who you show it to; premature criticism can shut something down that perhaps deserves more of a chance.
N: Do you not get stressed and want to talk about it?
J: I’d say I would be characterised as an anxious person, so yeah, I do worry about work a lot… You know, Heather [Ive’s wife of 30 years] knows roughly the products I’m working on, but I don’t talk about it specifically, which I’m sure she’s enormously relieved about.
N: How do you balance your life and work, then?
J: Appallingly!
N: Can you sense when you’ve overworked yourself and have to take some time out to get inspired again?
J: The difficult thing with being a designer is that it isn’t something you just do in the studio. If you walk around with your eyes open and truly see, and think about what you see, then you’re con-stant-ly wondering, “Why is that like this? Why could it not be like that?” Or, “That’s fantastic, that’s interesting.” I don’t know if “working” is the most accurate description, but the very way you engage in the world is atypical. That feels like designing.
N: Is there anything you’ve been particularly proud of designing? I never thought I’d be alive to see something like Facetime exist – when I first heard of it, I thought it was just too futuristic. To be in the middle of somewhere like Nairobi or Delhi and be able to talk to my mum, to actually see her face, is like magic.
J: I agree. I would say that Facetime is one of the most lovely examples of communication – connection can be very transactional, like with a text message, or incredibly nuanced and intimate like it is with Facetime. Seeing someone’s eyes is really important.
N: You were friends with my papa, Azzedine Alaïa. What was it about his approach to the world, and design, that resonated with you?
J: He was the consummate craftsman. I loved the physical studio in which he worked, I loved the way, and how directly, he worked – his process. I was in utter awe watching him, and I loved that he let me watch. I thought that was so generous. It was incredible to see the way that he understood material, and the way he would be frustrated with material and so create new ones. And then these beautiful forms would emerge.
N: If the pin didn’t go through, he knew it wasn’t going to work.
J: He wouldn’t impose anything: the shape would appear because of his mastery of his materials, because he understood them so profoundly.
N: Exactly – sometimes I’d put on a dress and think it was going to be fitted a certain way, but instead it would flare out in a particular area. I’d always wonder, how does he know it’s going to fall like that?
J: Yes, he had such a purity of creation: he wouldn’t just say “This is the shape”, but it would be built into the way the garment was made.
N: The only people I’ve seen work with fabrics to that degree are Japanese. Are there any cultures you think have been particularly influential on design today?
J: In most cultures, if you engage enough and look beyond what’s obvious, there’s incred-ible beauty. That’s a good practice. I love travelling, I love Japan. I hadn’t even been on a plane until I was 21.
N: What went through your mind on the plane? Were you thinking you could design it better?
J: I was like a kid, I was just so excited to be going on a big plane. And also, in that predictably odd way, I thought, “How can this fly?” Because my suitcase was really heavy…
N: Last year, you were appointed chancellor of the Royal College of Art – how did that come about? Why did you take on the role?
J: I’ve always had a real affection for the Royal College, and I think it’s a particularly special place in terms of the diversity of its creative disciplines: from painting to sculpture to graphic design and architecture. It has a very particular sort of energy. I’ve worked with some great people, and I’ve been doing this for a while, and I like to think that some of what I’ve learnt would be useful to other people. That’s the primary reason: to try and share some of the things I’ve learnt – although I don’t presume that it’s all relevant. Also, you sort of think, “Well if I can describe what I’ve learnt, it somehow makes sense of some of the personal pain of learning.”
N: I’m sure. One last question: when you hire a new team member, what are you looking for?
J: The main thing is how they see the world. Ultimately, Steve’s legacy is a set of values and, I think, the belief in trying. Often the quietest voices are the easiest to overlook, but he was brilliant at lis-ten-ing as well as leading and speaking. A lot of com-munication is listening – not just lis-ten-ing to figure out what you want to say in response.
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