Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products (2 page)

Before Jony turned twelve, the family moved to Stafford, a medium-sized town several hundred miles north in England’s West Midlands. Sandwiched between the larger industrial city of Wolverhampton to the south and Stoke-on-Trent to the north, Stafford is a pretty place, its streetscapes lined with ancient buildings. On the edge of town the craggy ruins of Stafford Castle, originally established by the Norman conquerors of Britain in the eleventh century, stand guard over the city.

In the early eighties, Jony enrolled at Walton High School, a large, state-run school on the fringes of Stafford. Along with other local kids, he studied the usual grade-school subjects, and seemed to adapt easily
to his new hometown. Fellow students remember a slightly chubby, dark-haired, modest teenager. He was popular, with a wide circle of friends, and took part in a number of extracurricular activities around the school. “He was a determined character—he settled in straight away,” said retired teacher John Haddon, who taught German at the school.
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Although Walton had a computer lab stocked with early computers from the era (Acorns, BBC Micros and one of Clive Sinclair’s famous ZX Spectrums), Jony never felt at home there, perhaps because of his dyslexia. The computers of the era had to be programmed, keystroke by keystroke, on a blinking cursor command line.
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A local church organization, the Wildwood Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational evangelical congregation that met at a local community center, offered Jony a creative outlet along with other musicians he met at Wildwood. “He was drummer in a band called White Raven,” recalled Chris Kimberley, who attended Walton High School at the same time. “The other band members were much older than him. . . . They used to play mellow rock in church halls.”
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Drawing and design offered another necessary relief from academic subjects as, early on, Jony showed abilities as a skilled draftsman and design technician. His relationship with his father continued to be a source of inspiration. “My father was a very good craftsman,” Jony remembered as an adult. “He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.”
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At Christmas, Mike Ive would treat his son to a very personal present: unfettered access to his workshop. With no one else around, Jony could do anything he wanted with his father’s support. “His Christmas gift to me would be one day of his time in his college workshop, during the Christmas break when no one else was there, helping me make
whatever I dreamed up.”
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The only condition was that Jony had to draw by hand what they planned to make. “I always understood the beauty of things made by hand,” Jony told Steve Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson. “I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.”

Mike Ive also took Jony on tours around London design studios and design schools. One formative moment occurred on a visit to a car design studio in London. “At that moment, I realized that making sculpture on an industrial scale would be an interesting thing to do with my life,” Jony later said.
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By the age of thirteen, Jony knew he wanted “to draw and make stuff,” but hadn’t quite pinned down exactly what he wanted to do. He contemplated designing everything—from cars to products, from furniture to jewelry and even boats.

Mike Ive’s influence on his son’s design development may not be quantifiable, but it’s irrefutable. He was a strong advocate of teaching empirically (making and testing)
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and of intuitive designing (“get on and make it, refine as you go”).
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In his slide presentations, the older Ive described the act of “drawing and sketching, talking and discussing” as critical in the creative process and advocated risk taking and a conscious acceptance of the notion that designers may not “know it all.” He encouraged design teachers to manage the learning process by telling “the design story.” He thought it essential for youngsters to develop tenacity “so there’s never an idle moment.” All of these elements would manifest themselves in his son’s process of developing the iMac and iPhone for Apple.

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Jony drove himself to school each day, arriving at Walton behind the wheel of a tiny Fiat 500 that he called Mabel. In early 1980s Britain, many post-punk and Goth teenagers wore black clothes, and Jony was no exception. His long black hair, teased into spikes several inches high,
made him look like Robert Smith from the popular band The Cure—though without Smith’s heavy eyeliner. Jony’s hair spiked so high that it would have been flattened by the roof of his Fiat, so he opened the sunroof. Teachers remember the bright orange Fiat entering the school yard with a mop of spiky black hair poking out the top.

In those days—as now—cars were important to Jony. He and his dad were restoring another car, a vintage “frogeye” Austin-Healey Sprite with spherical headlamps that seemed to rise out its hood like a couple of wide-open eyes. While the look was unusual, giving the small, two-seater sports car an approachable, anthropomorphic appearance, the design was intriguing, too, as the Sprite had a semi-monocoque body, meaning the car’s external skin was structural.

At school, Jony’s skills as a designer were beginning to emerge. A school friend and fellow design student, Jeremy Dunn, remembered a clever clock that Jony produced. Matte black, with black hands and no numbers, the design allowed the timepiece to be mounted in any orientation. Though made of wood, the clock’s black finish was so flawless his friends couldn’t tell what it was made from.
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With the possibility of university studies looming, Jony began to prepare for A-levels, the standardized qualification tests for university admission in the United Kingdom. His primary emphasis would be design technology, then a two-year combined course. In the first year, students explored the character and capabilities of different materials, ranging from wood and metal to plastics and fabrics, almost any material. The idea was to give students the opportunity to develop ideas and learn practical skills before the second year, which was more academic, and centered on a major project.

“It was very hands on,” recalled Craig Mounsey, a designer who took the course at the same time as Jony. “We were being taught execution skills and at the same time design process skills.”
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Jony’s work was exceptional and his drawing excellent. His teachers recalled that they had not seen his standard in another student of his age before; even at age seventeen, his designs were often production ready. “His graphics were brilliant,” said Dave Whiting, a faculty member who taught Jony design and technology for several years. “He used to draw initial designs on brown craft paper with white and black pens, which was a really effective and new way to do that. He had a different way of presenting ideas. His ideas were novel, innovative, fresh.”
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“Jony was so good,” Whiting added, “we learned a lot from him, through looking at his work.”

Not only was Jony skilled at the crafts side, he was exceptionally good at communicating his ideas. “He did things that other people weren’t doing,” said Whiting. “When you are a designer, you have to be able to convey your ideas to people who are not designers; perhaps they are financing you or going to do the production, and you have to be able to turn them on to the product and its feasibility. Jony was able to do that.”

His teachers recognized how sophisticated his work was, and some of Jony’s drawings and paintings were hung in the head teacher’s office. “They depicted parts of churches, arches and details of tumbling-down churches and ruins, which were very accurate pencil sketches, as well as watercolors,” said Whiting. When the head teacher’s office was redecorated some time during the late 1980s, the sketches disappeared, but people remembered his skills. “I have heard Jony say that he is not good at drawing,” Whiting said in an interview, “but that’s not true.

“Jony saw, even in the early days, the importance of line and detail in products. For instance, he designed some mobile phones that were slim and detailed, like modern phones, even while he was still a school student.” Jony’s interest in phones was not just adolescent tinkering. He would continue to design new phones through his later schooling (and, of course, at Apple).

For his second-year project, Jony chose to design an overhead projector (OHP). DT students were required to produce initial ideas, refine them, make presentation drawings and mock-up models and, if possible, build the actual product. The task was more than a theoretical exercise on paper: It was a complete design process, concept to completion.

The project also required market research. Jony knew that OHPs were standard issue at schools and businesses at the time. They sat on teachers’ desks, projecting images of transparent slides onto walls and whiteboards. The ubiquitous machines were all big and bulky, but Jony, having researched the OHP market, decided there was an opening for a portable model.

He designed a light OHP that would collapse into a matte black briefcase with lime green fittings. Highly portable, it was very modern looking—and quite unlike the clunky, utilitarian desktop OHPs of the day. When the lid of the case was opened, it revealed a Fresnel lens with a magnifying glass and a light underneath. As with traditional OHPs, transparent film images placed on the screen were then projected via a series of mirrors and a magnifying lens onto the wall.

Ralph Tabberer, a teacher friend of Mike Ive’s, recalled being impressed when he saw the portable OHP for the first time. “Its hydraulics were so well put together, that it folded out almost with a sigh. I could see the incipient talent that was coming out of Jonathan.”

The teachers at Walton liked Jony’s project and decided to enter it, along with those of a few other students, into a national competition. That year, the Young Engineer of the Year Award, sponsored by the British Design Council, was to be judged by the internationally famous architect and interior designer Terence Conran. For the first round, the entrants submitted graphics, drawings and photographs. The most interesting designs were then chosen for the next stage of the competition.

Jony’s portable OHP project was among those selected for round two.
Before sending his OHP for the next stage of judging, Jony took it apart for a final clean and polish. When he put it back together, however, he inadvertently inserted the lens backward. As a result, instead of projecting a clear image, the inverted Fresnel lens sprayed light in all directions, rendering the image indistinguishable. As submitted, the device was useless, and the judges rejected Jony’s design. Still, his idea was certainly unique: Though he didn’t win, a not-dissimilar portable OHP hit the market not long afterward.

At sixteen, Jony’s talent was already beginning to gain the attention of the design world.

Philip J. Gray, the managing director of London’s leading design firm, Roberts Weaver Group, spotted Jony’s work at a teachers’ conference.

As Her Majesty’s chief inspector for design, Mike Ive organized what became an annual conference to promote design in the national curriculum. When Phil Gray arrived to be the event’s keynote speaker, he laid eyes on Jony’s work for the first time.

In the conference foyer a small exhibition of design work by high school students had been installed. Among the work on display were some pieces by Jony. Gray was drawn immediately to Jony’s sketches of toothbrushes. Much later, Gray recalled the “fine lines in pencil and crayon,” and “the quality of thinking and analysis” evident in the work of the young design student.

“His work stood out as being very mature for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old,” Gray said. “I remarked what an extraordinary talent. Mike replied, ‘That’s nice because that was done by my son Jony.’”
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A few days later, father and son visited Gray at the Roberts Weaver Group offices in central London. Over lunch, Gray gave the Ives some
advice about the best colleges for ID. “I made a few recommendations,” Gray recalled. His top recommendation was Newcastle Polytechnic.

During lunch, Mike Ive also asked a cheeky question: Would Gray’s company sponsor Jony though college? In return for an annual stipend (about £1,500 for each of four years), Jony would promise to work for the design firm after graduation. Sponsoring was very unusual at the time, but Gray agreed.

“Jony is the only person I sponsored at RWG,” Gray said. “We had interns, who came to work with us during summer breaks from university—but Jony was the only student we sponsored. . . . I had no problem persuading the other directors at RWG to sponsor Jony, because he had shown some clear talent.”

Although it might appear that Mike Ive was driving his son to pursue a career in design, Gray didn’t believe that was the case. He thought Mike was just responding to his son’s growing obsession with design. “Mike used his position to be able to rub shoulders with the design elite and he hoped that some of that would rub off on Jony,” Gray allowed, adding that Jony “was a very smart engineer. . . . Father and son were both very enthusiastic. A liking for design was just in the family.”
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In the years that followed, Gray had more opportunities to observe father and son. “They were so alike; shy but very focused and [they] always got things done without fuss,” he said. “I never recall raised voices! My memories are mostly of smiles and the pleasure of being with them rather than raucous laughter. Mike’s pride was there to see but never spoken about. It’s unusual but talent and modesty can go together.”

His father’s influence was evident in Jony’s temperament as well as in their shared love of design. “Mike Ive was a real enthusiast who always loved what he did,” said Gray. “He was a really energetic person and desperately keen for his son to succeed. He was simply a caring
father who tried to make sure that Jony had all the best opportunities to get on as a designer.”

In his years at Walton High School, Jony opted to study not only design technology at an advanced level but also chemistry and physics, which was unusual for an arts-oriented student. When he graduated from Walton High School in 1985, he did so with an A in each of his three A-level exams. The hard work of two years of preparation paid off, as earning three top grades wasn’t easy: According to UK government statistics, his results put him in the top 12 percent of students nationwide.
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These grades made him eligible to apply for Oxford or Cambridge, the best known of the UK universities. Having been interested in studying to be a car designer, he also considered Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London, one of the world’s leading art and design schools. But when he visited, the place didn’t seem to be a good fit. Jony found the other students “too weird,” as he put it. “They were making ‘vroom, vroom’ noises as they did their drawings.”
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With his academic record and evident talents, Jony had choices. In the end, he did as Phil Gray had advised and opted for Newcastle Polytechnic in the north of England. Product design was to be his main thing.