32 Quotes & Sayings By Jonathan Ive

Jonathan Ive is the current Chief Design Officer at Apple Inc., which he joined in 1992, thereafter overseeing the development of the company's hardware products. He has overseen the creation of some of Apple’s most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Before joining Apple, he worked at Propsys, an interdisciplinary design consultancy, for eight years. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and Kingston School of Art.

1
What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive. Jonathan Ive
2
The form of computers has never been important, with speed and performance being the only things that mattered. Jonathan Ive
3
There's no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times. Jonathan Ive
4
One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together. Jonathan Ive
5
Why is it when we have a bad experience with a product, we assume it is us, but a bad experience with food, we blame the food?! Jonathan Ive
6
The best ideas start as conversations. Jonathan Ive
7
'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing. Jonathan Ive
8
It is sad that so many designers don't know how to make. CAD software can make a bad design look palatable! It is sad that four years can be spent on a 3D design course without making anything! People who are great at designing and making have a great advantage. Jonathan Ive
9
A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end. Jonathan Ive
10
To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason. Jonathan Ive
11
Apple's Industrial Design team is harder to get into than the Illuminati, and part of the reason is because no one leaves. In the last 15 years, not one of the 18 designers has ditched Apple for greener pastures. Jonathan Ive
12
All I've ever wanted to do is design and make it's what I love doing. Jonathan Ive
13
I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet. Jonathan Ive
14
It's a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face. Jonathan Ive
15
I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design. Jonathan Ive
16
Perhaps I'd like to design cars, but I don't think I'd be much good at it. Jonathan Ive
17
Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products. Jonathan Ive
18
The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design. Jonathan Ive
19
Eight years of work can be copied in six months. It wasn't inevitable that it was going to work. A stolen design is stolen time. Jonathan Ive
20
I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left. Jonathan Ive
21
When something's made in the smallest volume - as a one-off couture piece - or in large quantities, deep care is critical to determine authentic, successful design and, ultimately, manufacture. Jonathan Ive
22
We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple. But it is very much about designing and prototyping and making. Jonathan Ive
23
Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing, and making. Form and the material and process - they are beautifully intertwined - completely connected. Jonathan Ive
24
My focus is incredibly narrow. I can't talk with any authority other than design and development of product. Jonathan Ive
25
That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one. Jonathan Ive
26
Our goal is to desperately make the best products we can. We're not naive. We trust that if we're successful and we make good products, that people will like them. And we trust that if people like them, they'll buy them. And we figured out the operation and we're effective. We know what we're doing, so we'll make money, but it's a consequence. Jonathan Ive
27
There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence. Jonathan Ive
28
There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively. Jonathan Ive
29
I think that we're on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the '70s, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal. Jonathan Ive
30
Every new car, you open the door, and you look at all those internal mellifluous swoopy bits, and they have no meaning. Jonathan Ive
31
One person's car is another person's scenery. Jonathan Ive