A biography for Jonathan Ivehasn’t been written yet.
“I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.”
“I get an incredible thrill and satisfaction from seeing somebody with Apple's tell-tale white earbuds. But I'm constantly haunted by thoughts of, is it good enough? Is there any way we could have made it better?”
“When you're trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product.”
“We won't do something different for different's sake. Designers cave in to marketing, to the corporate agenda, which is sort of, 'Oh, it looks like the last one; can't we make it look different?' Well no, there's no reason to.”
“If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive.”
“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.”
“At the start of the process the idea is just a thought - very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.”
“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.”
“'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.”
“You learn a lot about vital corporations through non-vital corporations.”
“Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can't imagine any other way.”
“There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.”
“When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.”
“It's easy to assume that just because you make something in small volumes, not using many tools, that there is integrity and care - that is a false assumption.”
“I think it's important that we learn how to draw and to make something and to do it directly. To understand the properties you're working with by manipulating them and transforming them yourself.”
“The iPhone was broadly dismissed. The iPod was broadly dismissed. The iPad was probably more copiously written off as a large iPod.”
“The thing with focus is that it's not this thing you aspire to, like, 'Oh, on Monday I'm going to be focused.' It's every single minute: 'Why are we talking about this when we're supposed to be talking about this?'”
“I think a beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.”
“All I've ever wanted to do is design and make; it's what I love doing.”
“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.”