Jonathan Ive Quotations

Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.

There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.

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.

What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

Design is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.

If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

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.

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.

What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness.

A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.

One thing most people don't know is that Steve Jobs is an exceptional designer.

There's no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.

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 shouldn't be afraid to fail - if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

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.

We won't be different for different's sake. Different is easy... make it pink and fluffy! Better is harder. Making something different often has a marketing and corporate agenda.

Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.

I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making.

When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.

If you are truly innovating, you don't have a prototype you can refer to.

True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go... Yeah, well, of course.

Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.

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.

You learn a lot about vital corporations through non-vital corporations.

I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity.

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.

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?!

When you do everything to make the very best product, it also means you're very focused on just a few products.

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.

It never ceases to amaze me what it takes to develop and bring to mass production a product.

It's difficult to do something radically new, unless you are at the heart of a company.

I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left.

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.

The most important thing is that you actually care, that you do something to the very best of your ability

Goal we've always had for design at Apple is to create solutions that are inevitable.

When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.

That's an interesting thing about an object. One object speaks volumes about the company that produced it and its values and priorities.

With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number. You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo... that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.

So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think "of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?" It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.

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?

As consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.

The more I learnt about this cheeky - almost rebellious - company, the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had reason for being that wasn't just about making money.

I left London in 1992, but I'm there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting.

I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design.

I think it’s a wonderful view that care was important – but I think you can make a one-off and not care and you can make a million of something and care. Whether you really care or not is not driven by how many of the products you’re going to make.

The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.

Objects and their manufacture are inseparable, you understand a product if you understand how it's made.

The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.

There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is.

If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you don't have references for.

The quest for simplicity has to pervade every part of the process. It really is fundamental.

We’re surrounded by anonymous, poorly made objects. It’s tempting to think it’s because the people who use them don’t care-just like the people who make them. But what we’ve shown is that people do care. It’s not just about aesthetics. They care about things that are thoughtfully conceived and well made. We make and sell a very, very large number of (hopefully) beautiful, well-made things. our success is a victory for purity, integrity-for giving a damn.

I figured out some basic stuff: that form and colour defines your perception of the nature of an object, whether or not it is intended to.

We are really pleased with our revenues but our goal isn't to make money. It sounds a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal and what makes us excited is to make great products. If we are successful people will like them and if we are operationally competent, we will make money,

We’re keenly aware that when we develop and make something and bring it to market that it really does speak to a set of values. And what preoccupies us is that sense of care, and what our products will not speak to is a schedule, what our products will not speak to is trying to respond to some corporate or competitive agenda. We’re very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.

And I said couldn't we be more moderate? And he said why? And I said because I care about the team. And he said, 'No Jony, you're just really vain. You just want people to like you. I'm surprised at you, because I thought you really held the work up as the most important and not how you are perceived by people.' People misunderstand Steve because he was so focused.

Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see... rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.

Apple's Jony Ive describes his "fanatical" approach to design in new interview

The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.

We shouldn't be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing.

It feels like each time we are beginning at the beginning, in a really exciting way.

Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great,

The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material--the material informs the form,

Simplicity is really hard.

In our quest to quickly make three-dimensional objects, we can miss out on the experience of making something that helps give us our first understandings of form and material, of the way a material behaves--'I press too hard here, and it breaks here' and so on. Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it's important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials.

I’m always focussed on the actual work, and I think that’s a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.

We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It's the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.

It's one of the curses of designing that when you look at anything, you're constantly thinking, Why? Why - why was it designed like that, and not like this?

but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.

It's just easier to talk about product attributes that you can measure with a number. Focus on price, screen size, that's easy. But there's a more difficult path, and that's to make better products, ones where maybe you can't measure their value empirically.

There are a thousand no's for every yes.

As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever I could get my hands on.

There's no other product that changes function like the computer.

My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.

What we don't include is as important as what we do include.

To do something innovative means that you reject reason.

The goal of Apple is not to make money but to make really nice products, really great products.

A beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.

Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural - it's so hard!

Perhaps I'd like to design cars, but I don't think I'd be much good at it.

The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.

Simplification is one of the most difficult things to do.

That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one.

There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.

The best ideas start as conversations.

One of the hallmarks of the team is this sense of looking to be wrong. It's the inquisitiveness, and sense of exploration. It's about being excited to be wrong, because then you've discovered something new.

A lot of what we are doing is getting design out of the way.

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer.

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer. It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.

Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great. Competent design is not too much of a stretch. But if you are trying to do something new, you have challenges on so many axes.

Its difficult to do something radically new, unless you are at the heart of a company.

Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something thats genuinely better is very hard.

Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people's minds.

Our goal is to try to bring a calm and simplicity to what are incredibly complex problems so that you're not aware really of the solution.

We make and sell a very, very large number of (hopefully) beautiful, well-made things. Our success is a victory for purity, integrity - for giving a damn.

It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build an easier for people to work with.

Titles or organizational structures, that’s not the lens through which we see our peers,

The design process is about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers.