Jony Ive. Designer of Tomorrow (Part I)

On the eve of Sunday Times Magazine published an extensive article about John Arlidzha Apple's chief designer, in which tells of how as a result of his work changed computers, phones and music device. Given the secrecy that prevails in the company and personal modesty Quince is probably one of the most outspoken interview Quince.

"Hello. Thank you for coming."

Quince works Dzhonatna help us eat, drink and sleep, work, travel, relax, read, listen and watch, go shopping, chat, dating and sex. Many of us spend its screens longer than with family members. Some of these screens like more than family members. Over the years Ive own shyness combined with bordering on paranoia Apple secrecy, his employer, It meant that we did not really know much about the man who painted the future, expressed in products such as the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. But last month, he invited me to Cupertino, where Apple is headquartered, for his first detailed interview since he headed the design department 20 years ago.

Gods - or was it the ghost of Steve Jobs? - it seems to have been against the idea. Jobs did not like Apple executives were interviewed. In California, it was not normal rain for several months, but in the morning with clouds moved onto the Pacific Coast and the Golden Gate Bridge was the Black Gate bridge. The track 280 to Silicon Valley looked like a deep river instead of conventional lava flows with traces of off-road tires. But at 10 am in a dazzling white peregovorke Apple on the first floor of the building 4 Headquarters the company's Chief Technology divisions came with clear instructions to find a tea bag with bergamot.

"Hello. Thank you for coming, "- smiled Ive walked into the room and picking up her drink. Ive - the most invisible of all the notable personalities that you could ever see. You may think you know that it met in the street, but in fact it is not. He is not very tall, well-built and bald (Ovate), his two-day stubble and he dresses like a regular dad on weekends - a dark polo shirt, a linen trousers, wide shoes. He speaks slowly and gently with Essex accent, completely preserved in spite of staying in America for two decades. "I can not even pronounce the word math, always get maths, so I say mathematics. I have a stupid manner of speaking, "- he laughs.

Ive now in a good mood - and not only on the occasion of his 47 birthday. He likes the idea of ​​this interview, because he sees himself as the manufacturer rather than the designer. "Objects and their manufacturer are inseparable. You understand the product, if you know how it is made. Even before I start thinking about how certain things should look, I want to know what they do, how they work, what they are, or may need to be made. So think more and more people. Now we are experiencing a revival of the idea of ​​creation. "

Ive created things with the moment that could turn a screwdriver. He inherited the skills of the artisan from his father Michael. He worked as a silversmith and later lectured on crafts, design and technology at the Polytechnic Institute of Middlesex. Ive spent my childhood, going to parts of family values, and then trying to put them back. "Solving mysteries of the physical world, starting with its destruction," - he says. Disassemble easily, but - "I remember, to understand how something into small pieces alarm clock and it was very difficult to collect it back. I could not tighten the mainspring. "Thirty years later, he once did the same with her iPhone. Just to prove that he is capable of it.

His love for making things shared by Steve Jobs, former Apple CEO, who died 3 years ago. This has helped to create the most creative partnership that has ever seen the modern world capitalism. In less than two decades, they have transformed Apple from a company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, in the most expensive corporation in the world, the cost of which are now passed for 665 billion dollars.

Even before I start thinking about how certain things should look, I want to know what they do, how they work, what they are, or may need to be made.

"Steve and I spent month after month working on part of the product, which is often even one not only sees, but does not even realize that it exists." - smiles Ive. Apple is famous for the fact that the insides of her art looks as good as it looks. "It did not give any additional functionality. We did it because we were not all the same, because when you know how well you can do something, do not do that, whether it is something visible or not, felt like a failure. "

For a man whose products are called iChto something surprising how rarely Ive says the pronoun I ( «I»). He constantly talks about working in a team with Jobs, using "we". This is not a trick in the style of fake psevdootkrovennyh corporate speeches. "I do not like to attract attention to his person. Design, engineering and manufacture of these products requires the work of the big teams. "

Ive really is the shadow - how can all remain in the shadow of one of the most highly paid designers in the world. He has only one house - in the chic district of Pacific Heights in San Francisco, where his neighbors are from the Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, co-founder Peter Thiel Paypal and actor Nicolas Cage. He lives with his wife, a Briton, a writer and historian Heather Pegg, and their twin sons. He avoids publicity. He and his team of designers have been seen in public only once - two years ago in London, when they all got a D & AD, the prestigious award in the field of design.

Ive just does not like the hustle and bustle and enjoy the simplicity. This is evident in its products. They can be revolutionary, high-tech magic box, but they look so elegant just that you know their purpose and how to use it from the moment I first take them into hands. iMac swept from our tables complex, difficult-to-use PC and did the job with an easy computer. With the help of a small white box with a scroll wheel, he put us in a pocket 1,000 songs. iPhone was so pleasant to the touch, that sent to landfill uncomfortable Blackberry in the blink of an eye. A child of five can take the iPad in hand and immediately start using it.

His love of simplicity and directness extends beyond technology. is he collects utilitarian vehicles - such that if carved from a solid piece of aluminum. He has several Bentley and neat silvery-blue Aston Martin DB4, released in the 60's. These machines - the object of his adolescent love that pushed him on the path of design. After high school, he went through several courses of automotive design in London, including that of the Royal College. He quickly changed his mind. "Classes were filled with students who make sounds" Vroom! Vroom "in painting time!" - he recalls still terrified. So he went to the Polytechnic University of Newcastle to study industrial design. His works of that period - note, this is the phone and hearing aid - were so good that they were exhibited at the Design Museum in London.

After leaving Newcastle, he went to work in a Roberts Weaver, London design agency, is paid for his college education. A year later he moved to Tangerine (Eng. Mandarin - Per.), a new design agency in London's Hoxton Square. He definitely had a weakness for businesses named after fruit. There he was engaged in design all in a row, from microwave ovens to toothbrushes. But he quickly dispelled illusions about the work on clients who did not like him, or whose value he did not share. The last straw was the episode when a rainy day, he came to the city of Hull to submit your design sinks and toilets. On this day there was a British charity comic festival "Red Nose Day", and the boss Quince ridiculed the work as too modern and expensive - while wearing a clown's Huge Red nose.

To be continued…

part II

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