14 DAY TRIAL // Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is a flurry of intriguing information about the Apple co-founder’s relationship with colleagues, including one particularly interesting aspect about Jobs taking the spotlight away from Jony Ive, the guru behind Apple’s unmatchable designs.
Isaacson recounts that he got the chance to interview Ive in his bunker at Apple’s HQ where the Brit would cast molds for the next-generation of Apple products, listening to techno music along with his team of trusted assistants.
During one of their discussions, Ive remarked that, “In so many other companies, ideas and great design get lost in the process. The ideas that come from me and my team would have been completely irrelevant, nowhere, if Steve hadn’t been here to push us, work with us, and drive us through all the resistance to turn our ideas into products.”
Ive also touched on the topic of packaging design, which is almost as important as the design of the product itself his vision.
Ive explained to Isaacson: “Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging. I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.”
But there were times when Jony wasn’t all that happy with Steve’s attitude, especially when he took credit for his beautiful designs that took painstaking work to achieve:
“He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one.’ And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea. I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. So it hurts when he takes credit for one of my designs,” Ive said.