
Jonathan Ive
iPhone, 2007

Designed by Jonathan Ive, (English, b. 1967) and Apple Industrial Design Team.
Cooper Hewitt, …

As senior vice president of design at Apple, Jonathan Ive is not only responsible for introducing products that have shaped industrial design trends of the early 21st century—including the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, among others—but for determining how we interact with technology. Ive’s design for the vibrantly colored and pleasingly shaped iMac (1998) revitalized Apple and signaled a paradigm shift by demonstrating that personal computers could be user-friendly tools, both as objects and operating systems. With the launch of the iPod (2001), Ive presented a new class of personal device that offered powerful capabilities controlled by an elegant, intuitive navigation system. The genial aspect of Ive’s designs belies the exacting, painstaking process that goes into perfecting each product. "When you realize how well you can make something,” Ive has said, “falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure."


Designed by Jonathan Ive, (English, b. 1967) and Apple Industrial Design Team.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, Gift of Roland L. Trope, 2009-29-1.

As senior vice president of design at Apple, Jonathan Ive is not only responsible for introducing products that have shaped industrial design trends of the early 21st century—including the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, among others—but for determining how we interact with technology. Ive’s design for the vibrantly colored and pleasingly shaped iMac (1998) revitalized Apple and signaled a paradigm shift by demonstrating that personal computers could be user-friendly tools, both as objects and operating systems. With the launch of the iPod (2001), Ive presented a new class of personal device that offered powerful capabilities controlled by an elegant, intuitive navigation system. The genial aspect of Ive’s designs belies the exacting, painstaking process that goes into perfecting each product. "When you realize how well you can make something,” Ive has said, “falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure."