Jony Ive and his mantra for design

25 Feb 2025

Jony Ive and Desert Island Discs

I had it on in the background on the weekend. Since then I’ve had it on repeat.

He is probably one of the most prolific designers of our time. 30 years at Apple. Designing everything from the iMac to the iPhone.

“I’m not interested in tech for tech sake, I’m interested in people” and “I have an old school thought on design, to be useful”.

In 97 when people didn’t understand the role of the PC, he decided to put a handle on it, expose the back and add a colourway. It moved the conversation from a technical one around gigahertz to something people already understood around form and colour… “it felt alive, it felt like it was going somewhere”.

His mantra “how can people connect in an intuitive and natural way to extraordinary (tech) capabilities”. Interestingly, he is currently working on a hardware project with OpenAI… how they move into hardware is going to be the next big step and makes a lot of sense.

His general language around design is beautiful and so considered. There is something so pure and inspiring hearing someone talk about their craft in such an open and honest way like that. No overinflated hype, ego or fads.

Simply products that are made by people for people. Driven by intuition.
As the years slide on, the power of this will become more and more potent!