Jonathan Ive Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

It's actually a rare and precious thing to discover what it is you love to do, and I encourage you to remain unapologetically consumed by it. Be faithful to your gift and very confident in its value.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Apple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation. You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobs'] preoccupation. His observation was that the products weren't good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around.

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.

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

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.

There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.

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.

True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, 'Yeah, well, of course.' Where there's no rational alternative.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.

Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn't just about making money.

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

If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

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

Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.

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

There is beauty when something
works and it works intuitively.

We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.

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

Good is the enemy of great.

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.

Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.

The best ideas start as conversations.

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

What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

People's interest is in the product, not in its authorship.

We're very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.

To do something innovative means that you reject reason.

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.

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.