May 12th, 2009
There has been a lot of interest in my site today as a result of my winning a UDRP dispute that was filed against me on March 6, 2009. The decision dated May 5, 2009 is available here and it speaks for itself.
I first started this website as a college project when I was studying in university in 2004. As a design student, I was a huge fan of Jonathan Ive and I wanted to set up a fansite about him and his work. The site is a not-for-profit educational site for people like me who are fans of Jonathan Ive. It has grown over the years with many hundreds of thousands of visitors and regular news articles about Jonathan Ive. I have never sought to make a profit from it.
In April 2006, Apple Inc. spoke to me to ask me to post a disclaimer saying that I had no links with Apple or with Jonathan Ive. I did so here, and Apple Inc. approved of the content of the website.
In February 2008 another Apple Inc. employee got in touch and I was put under great pressure to give up my website. That Apple employee offered me an iPod (and later a Macbook) in exchange. This upset me, as I had spent a tremendous amount of time building and maintaining the website. When I declined the offer, I was told I must name a sales price if I did not want to face litigation. I reacted emotionally to the pressure, and gave a high price of US$ 400,000 to dissuade harassment. I had no desire or intention to sell my website to Apple Inc.
I would be happy to reach an amicable solution with Jonathan Ive. I have told his lawyers this and that I would be pleased to discuss this matter with him in person and to try any process that would allow an amicable settlement of this matter (e.g., mediation). I have received no response to this request so far.
As regular readers will know, I have the utmost respect for Jonathan and am one of his biggest supporters. I just want to be left alone to carry on running this website, and I hope you will continue to enjoy reading it.
Harry Jones.
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April 28th, 2009
Jony Ive is to have an honoury doctorate bestowed upon him from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) next month.
The degree will be awarded at the school’s 126th commencement ceremony on 30th May in Providence.
Also being honoured at the event are Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, and Sir Ken Robinson, the writer and arts advocate. RISD has singled out Jonathan, Caterina and Sir Ken as being “exceptional individuals who have made groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and design”.
Founded in 1877, the Rhode Island School of Design is renowned as one of the best fine arts and design schools in the United States. It’s admission process includes the infamous for the “hometest”, which requires applicants to undertake three drawing assignments.
More information on the honory degrees are available on the RISD website.
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April 20th, 2009
Jonathan Ive attended the UK premiere of Objectified last Thursday and participated in a post-screening discussion about the film’s themes.
Jony joined Gary Hustwit, the film’s director, fellow designer Marc Newson and design critic Alice Rawsthorn on stage at the Curzon cinema in Chelsea, London for a brief chat after the film was shown.
According to Design Week Jonathan “chose to lampoon designers, claiming to be ’shocked at how disconnected so many designers are from the object, and end up doing a lousy job’”.
Stephen Holmes, writing for Develop3D, reports the discussion also covered the rise of consumer-created design and “the availability of 3D software and the ease of 3D rapid prototyping”, something he said Ive and Newson found troubling.
Steven Fry, who accompanied Jonathan to the event, said he “enjoyed it hugely” and enthused “[Jonathan Ive is] more or less a god in my universe”.
Objectified, featuring Jonathan Ive, will be screened at London’s Barbican centre from 22nd-28th May. Tickets are available to purchase on the Barbican website.
Meanwhile the forthcoming issue of Design Week features full coverage of the premiere and an interview with Jony.
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November 16th, 2008
Readers in the UK will be able to see Jony interviewed as part of Steven Fry In America tonight on BBC1 at 9pm.
For those unfamiliar with the series, the programme sees Steven Fry traveling across the USA in a London black cab meeting inhabitants along the way. Tonight’s show (which is the final in the series) focuses on California and the west coast of the USA.
More details once the show has been broadcast…
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October 20th, 2008
A perhaps nervous Jonathan Ive took centre stage at Apple’s notebook event last week to help unveil revolutionary new Macbook and Macbook Pro models.
In a departure from usual Apple events, Steve Jobs called on the Senior Vice President to present a segment called “a new way to build notebooks” that explored the challenges of building laptop computers, and revealed the innovative production process that has made the designs of the new Macbooks possible.
Although described as “very dry stuff” by some attendees, Jonathan’s six and half minute presentation stripped back Apple’s usual marketing gloss in a fascinating exploration of modern computer design.
Jonathan explained that for products built prior to the Macbook Air Apple couldn’t rely on just the aluminium casing to provide the strength needed, and had to resort to a die-cast magnesium skeleton and stiffening plates to realise products like the 15″ Macbook Pro.
Such complicated construction methods put constraints on the design of Apple’s notebooks, and Jony revealed how his design team had been trying for years to find an alternative approach.
The breakthrough was a production process that used laser cutting tools to machine the entire casing from a single block of aluminium, resulting in a single ‘unibody’ enclosure. The unibody is both lighter, stronger and more precisely engineered than previous enclosures, resulting in something that Jonathan describes as “more beautiful internally than it is externally”.
After Jony had finished Steve returned to the stage and revealed more design innovations as the new Macbooks were introduced. These ranged from major features (a new trackpad with integrated button, constructed from glass to optimise the ‘coefficiency of friction’) to small tweaks that build upon the Macbook and Powerbook design heritage (the unique battery life indicator LEDs are now located on the side of the product, allowing you to check the battery life without having to turn the product over).
Jonathan’s involvement in the presentation was obviously intended to assert Apple’s position as the most technically ambitious and innovative notebook manufacturer (and if you believe some, to reassure investors that there are successors to Steve Jobs). More interestingly it focused the event on product design in a way that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of products like the G4 Cube.
You can watch the full video of the event here. In addition Jony features in the beautiful Macbook introductory video that describes the unibody production process in more detail.
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February 27th, 2007
Kidhaven Press are to publish what I believe to be the first book devoted to Jony Ive, titled “Jonathan Ive: Designer of the iPod”.
Kidhaven are a children’s book publisher and the title will be part of their “innovators” series. The book will be written by Kris Hirschmann.
Here is the table of contents:
- Contents
- Introduction: Success by Design
- Chapter 1: A Developing Talent
- Chapter 2: Breakthrough
- Chapter 3: Changing the Computing World
- Chapter 4: The iPod Revolution
- Notes
- Glossary
- For Further Exploration
- About the Author
“Jonathan Ive: Designer of the iPod” will be released this June, RRP $24.95.
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February 25th, 2007
The Observer have featured Jonathan in their article “The 50 men who really understand women” (scroll down to number 30).
Nestled in amongst John Galliano and Lucian Freud, the short section credits Jonathan Ive with feminising technology with the design of the iMac and iBook.
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February 15th, 2007
Credit Jonathan Ive, design guru for Apple; he has an uncanny skill for imparting a device with simplicity, distinction and inevitability. He could probably design a better triangle, and when he was done you’d realize that three sides were one side too many.
James Lileks, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Eschewing either a keyboard or a stylus, it provides a context-related soft interface both driven and presented via the touchscreen … I want one.
Seb Janacek, silicon.com
The minimalist styling of the iPhone — it has only one button on its front — is the signature of Jonathan Ive, the award-winning Brit who is Apple’s senior vice-president of design.
The look and feel of the device — it is shaped like a chocolate bar and is only 11.6mm thick — is every bit as impressive and compelling as Apple’s fans have come to expect.
As a number of people noted, it is like something out of Tom Cruise’s science-fiction film Minority Report, which is set in 2054.
Paul Durman, The Times
Mac fans are excited about the fact that Apple has addressed the need to improve user experience while retaining the sleek design most have come to expect as standard from Apple’s head of design Jonathan Ive.
Jane Wakefield, BBC News
The iPhone is a typical piece of Ive design: an austere, abstract, platonic-looking form that somehow also manages to feel warm and organic and ergonomic.
Lev Grossman, Time
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February 15th, 2007
The Sun has published a feature on Jonathan Ive with the inspired title “Chingford boy is Mr Ive-pod”.
For those that don’t know it, The Sun it is infamous in the UK as a low-brow tabloid that mixes celebrity gossip and soft porn with pub politics.
Yet it can now claim Jonathan Ive as an avid reader, according to the article which states “the design genius displays his good taste by regularly reading The Sun in California”.
I sincerely hope this is a) a joke or b) Jonathan being ironic.
While the article shares little else new about Jonathan its still fun to read about our Jony in monosyllabic van-driver speak; describing him as “stickler for detail” and explaining that his status as a super-designer was “rubber-stamped” by his entry in Who’s Who.
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January 10th, 2007
While the whole world pours over iPhone rumours, specifications and comment in an orgy of technolust, Lev Grossman over at Time has managed to speak to the man who designed the product. Here are some choice extracts:
“Your phone’s got feet on,” he says, not unkindly. “Why would anybody put feet on a phone?” Ive has the answer, of course: “It raises the speaker on the back off the table. But the right solution is to put the speaker in the right place in the first place. That’s why our speaker isn’t on the bottom, so you can have it on the table, and you don’t need feet.” Sure enough, no feet toe the iPhone’s smooth lines.
“I think there’s almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,” says Ive. “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.”
Read the full article here
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