From a London startup to Apple to a startup again, trailing Jony Ive and his designs

We would all be using bulky looking computers and cumbersome operating systems if it weren’t Apple and its tech design breakthroughs. Sure, this may be a bit of an overstatement but as Tim Cook says and we couldn’t agree more, Jony’s unparalleled contribution in making technology beautiful can never be overstated. So, what made this genius go places? From designing furniture to sculpting the future of one of the most sophisticated and awaited products on this planet. Only a dive into the past could unravel that. 

Turns out that time does have a tale to tell about this $400 million worth designer. He was raised by his father who was a silversmith by profession, and that's where the spark for drawing and making things took birth. He disassembled things from his home just to peek inside them, went to the workshop with his father and even took art classes at the age of 14 (what?). By this time, as he was confident about turning his interest into an interesting career, he joined Newcastle polytechnic. Newcastle was like a playground to his passion, Jony got to learn the fundamentals and nuances, even the cultural aspects of design. We could only know this by an account from his course, where he made almost a hundred prototypes before one final design, his classmates barely made five or six.  It’s not a surprise that Ive graduated with first class honours from Newcastle. 

His schooling came to an end and there he was, 20 something with a degree in industrial design. He co-founded a design startup ‘Tangerine’. The company designed everything that you could name, furnitures, toilets VCRs and what not. Eventually Apple ended up being one of his clients and that’s when he got into the radar of Robert Brunner at Apple, the one who hired him. Though he got hired in 1992, his claim to fame didn’t come until Steve Jobs was back in 1997. Fueled by the energy and freedom that steve brought in, Ive stunned the world of boring computers with iMac. The machine that made work simple and offices colorful, which is not only visually beautiful but is much more compact and tactfully designed. No wonder Apple sold two million iMacs in 1998 alone. This was just the beginning of Apple’s route of making functional things exceptional. 

This went on, with milestones like iPod (2001), flat panel iMac (2002), iPhone (2007) and the most recent Apple watch. While I could go on writing about each of them, their singularity has always been the design and performance that’s class apart any of its contemporaries. The fact to be noted though is that, Ive wasn’t a great fan of technology initially but he became one eventually upon knowing its potential.

And now his stellar design career is taking him back to the roots. Ive is soon to launch his own design firm with Apple as its client, like good-ol-times. With nearly 5000 patents in his name, looks like retirement isn’t coming anytime soon to this 52 year old creative nerd and design genius. All we can do is hold our breaths until his new masterpiece pops up!