Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

As Jony has said, “A big definition of who you are as a designer, it’s the way you look at the world. And I guess one of the curses of what you do, is you are constantly looking at something and thinking, ‘Why? Why is it like that? Why is it like that and not like this?’”27 Very likely, as a man who see himself “constantly

His feedback was always non-directive. He never suggested how something should be changed but rather pushed Jony and his designers to come up with a better solution.

Jony is also an inveterate sketcher. He is a good at it, but emphasizes speed over detail. “He always wanted to get a thought down on paper so that people could understand it really quickly,” said Satzger.

But when he came in the ID space, he was always really comfortable.” Jobs spent a lot of time in the studio, but when he was away, Jony used his absence as an opportunity to get work done for the absent master. “When he went away, we would do 150 to 200 percent more work,” Satzger explained. “It was a good chance to blast stuff out and put new work

Music is an important part of the design studio’s atmosphere. There are about twenty white speakers in the room, with a pair of thirty-six-inch-high concert subwoofers. “When you walked into this concrete and steel, highly reflective room, the sound was immediately deep and loud,” Satzger remembered. “All kinds of music from around the world is pla

The thing is, it’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. —JONY IVE

‘The Guy Who Hired Jonathan Ive!’”

“We are looking for personality, overwhelming talent and the ability to work in a small group,” said De Iuliis.

To run the group like an outside consultancy but within Apple, Brunner set up a loose management structure that largely persists today. The designers always worked together on whatever project the group was working on. “We’d work on multiple projects, and move from project to project, pretty much the way he [Jony] does it today,” Brunner explained.