Edit:Who is Jonathan Ive? the guy who designed your iPod and iMac.



So today, Mr. Ive came to my art college to be awarded a doctorate for his achievement in design. There were only 20 people from each year from product design and a few others from different courses too, along with people from the press.

The first part had him dressed with a robe thingy for his doctorate while a bunch of high up people were talking about what he had achieved with his designs.

After that was done, Dylan Jones, the editor of British GQ and a former student of my college had a little season asking Mr.Ive questions with very interesting replies. This went on for 2 and a bit hours until we came to the part were the audience asked Mr.Ive questions.

Once that was finished, there was a little cocktail in the main building which was quite crowded in the start. Afterwards, as a lot of people had left and a very few people remaining, guess who came?

I managed to have a nice little conversation with the design god himself and just realized the amount of truth he says! This guy has had a great influence on me, no just design but the actual thinking behind it.

Anyway here are some pictures.














Me and Mr. Ive









P.S my spelling Suxxors

For anyone else who had no idea who Jonathan Ive is, from wikipedia:

"Jonathan P. Ive CBE (born February 1967 in London) is Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Computer. Ive led the team that designed the iMac, a key product in turning Apple's fortunes at a difficult time for the company, and the iPod, which has established Apple as the dominant presence in the mp3 player market."

WOW! That's fantastic! Thanks for posting and sharing the story and pictures with us.

That's pretty insane, to design products and get an honorary doctorate. I wonder who decides who this kind of stuff.

Thats dam cool.

What words of wisdom did he have to say about design?

Quote: (Originally Posted by stickuto)
Thats dam cool.

What words of wisdom did he have to say about design?

He went great lengths on explaining this and it may sound corny, but don't design to make money.

Won't make sense to you, but I think he coined well by saying someone invents the radio and then comes up with a certain design which everybody else copies, then comes the cassette has a certain design and then everybody copies, etc.

Innovation and paying attention to that micro and macro plays an important part.

He was talking about the amazing feat they pulled off with the new shuffle since the tolerances for the aluminium is something crazy like 0.03mm. The new iMacs stand was apparently very difficult to make because when people changed the postion of the screen it would apprantley wobble, so they made some kind of new material in a horse shoe shape that is used in eath quakes to abosorb any energy so it prevents the wobbling. This issue he highlighted was that Apple fixed the problem rather than most companies leaving it to the user to do (spot the subtle shot there)

He also mentioned the Zune too...

Quote: (Originally Posted by Doc Evils)
He also mentioned the Zune too...

In what capacity. Congrats on getting to meet him!

Quote: (Originally Posted by papayaninja)
In what capacity. Congrats on getting to meet him!

Well he talked about companies realizing that when you design something you need to do both the hardware AND software aspect in order to be successful and mentioned the 'Microsoft Zune Thingy' in regard of this. Apprantely before he came to London, he played around with one.

Don't think he was too keen on it being a wannabe iPod clone to be honest.

Awesome. Great photos, thanks for sharing.

Nice story - thanks for sharing it. And they happen to sit on white Barcelona Chairs - another design classic!!!

Uber kühl......

Thank you for sharing your experience, it's quite a cool one. I think his role is quite understated and had it not been for his designs perhaps people like Dylan Jones would not write about the iPod in his magazines, which essentially made it what it is today.

For anyone interested, Apple continues to storm the world of design through simplicity. Wallpaper* nominated the company twice in its annual design awards, for the Black Macbook and Shuffle (Second carnation). Vote if you so wish

To be fair I don't think Dylan Jones "made it what it is today".
I have never read GQ and I made the mistake of buying his book "iPod, therefore I am" and I found it tedious reading. I gave up in the end. Hardly an important element of the success of the iPod.

excellent that you got to meet Jonathan Ive

good design is invariably under appreciated except by people that really know!

shame the Barcelona Chairs were white leather - should always be black imho

Quote: (Originally Posted by Bob)
To be fair I don't think Dylan Jones "made it what it is today".
I have never read GQ and I made the mistake of buying his book "iPod, therefore I am" and I found it tedious reading. I gave up in the end. Hardly an important element of the success of the iPod.

"...people like Dylan Jones..."

I never said he is the sole reason for the transition from music player to cultural phenomenon. I'm just using him as an example. The publicity from fashion/design magazines is just a cog in the machine that drives consumer tastes and preferences. I thought it was a relevant post considering Ive is the main focus of this thread. I cannot comment on his book, or him as a person.

Mr.Ive is a fantastic guy to talk to. Seriously, this guy is right now on top of the design world, yet he did not have a single trace of ego lurking around him.

What I found pretty cool about him is that he is very down to earth and enjoys talking to students and answering (annoying) questions on various design geek subjects (bar the top secret stuff).

Learning his inspiration for the iPod was cool too.