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.
Jonathan Ive
There's no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.
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.
The best ideas start as conversations.
One person's car is another person's scenery.
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.
Every new car, you open the door, and you look at all those internal mellifluous swoopy bits, and they have no meaning.
Good is the enemy of great.
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.
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.
We all use something - you can't drill holes with your fingers. Whether it's a knife, a needle, or a machine, we all need the help of a device.
I think a beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.
A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.
When you're doing something for the first time, you don't know it's going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it's copied. I have to be honest: the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn't. I think it's theft, and it's lazy.
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.
The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.
Different' and 'new' is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.
We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable, that leave you with the sense that that's the only possible solution that makes sense.
'Design' is a word that's come to mean so much that it's also a word that has come to mean nothing.
There's no other product that changes function like the computer.
I don't know how we can compare the old watches we know with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.
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.
Once, even the simple metal needle challenged the conventional thinking of a time.
As a kid, I remember taking apart whatever I could get my hands on.
We knew that iMac was fast; we didn't need to make it ugly.
I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.
There are some shocking cars on the road.
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.
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.
When you do everything to make the very best product, it also means you're very focused on just a few products.
With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.
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.
You cannot disconnect the form from the material - the material informs the form.
Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural - it's so hard!
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.
There was a 'Wired' cover that had a big Apple logo with a crown of barbed wire as thorns, and underneath it just said, 'Pray.' I remember this because of how upsetting it was. Basically saying either it's going to just go out of business or be bought.
I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet.
One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.
I feel that it's lovely when, as a user, you're not aware of the complexity.
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.
I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making.
It never ceases to amaze me what it takes to develop and bring to mass production a product.
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 nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.
There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively.
It's easy to assume that just because you make something in small volumes, not using many tools, that there is integrity and care - that is a false assumption.
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.
You learn a lot about vital corporations through non-vital corporations.
Our goal isn't to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal, and what gets us excited, is to try to make great products.
