Apple’s design chief decides to call it a day

Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, has announced that he is leaving the company at the end of the year and will set up LoveFrom, his own creative business, with Apple as its first client.

Sir Jonathan “Jony” Ive has been instrumental in giving the world a string of iconic Apple products over the last two decades. Among them the most influential ones should be the iPod, which turned the recorded music industry upside down, the iPhone, which redefined what mobile handsets are and do, and the iPad, which practically created the tablet market. In addition, he was also behind the Mac computers and the Apple Watch, the success of which has been more muted.

Ive stressed that his departure from the company does not mean he will stop working with Apple. “While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved — I hope for many, many years to come,” Ive told the Financial Times in an interview. “This just seems like a natural and gentle time to make this change.” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, believed the company would continue the success of the Ive era, and was looking forward to the collaboration with Ive’s new venture. “We get to continue with the same team that we’ve had for a long time and have the pleasure of continuing to work with Jony,” Cook told the FT. “I can’t imagine a better result.” Apple will not announce a successor to fill Ive’s CDO position immediately. Instead, the managers of the design teams will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO.

Ive’s decision to leave should not appear to have come out of the blue to those that have followed the industry, and the company, closely. He was the late Steve Jobs’ closest ally and, among other things, had been an active presence at product debuts, through video links. After Jobs passed away this patterned continued, up to the point when the Apple Watch was launched. Ive would appear at the events on pre-recorded videos, unveiling the products, in particular talking about the details. That has not happened since. In a 2015 feature by the New Yorker magazine, Ive said he had been “deeply tired”. In May that year he was appointed CDO, a position that would rid him of the day-to-day responsibilities to run the design team.

More recently it appears Ive has expand his interest beyond sleek consumer products. For example, his team were heavily involved in designing Apple’s new headquarters. This is also a vision he gives his new business. “There are products that we have been working on for a number of years,” Ive told the FT. “I’m beyond excited that I get to continue working on those, and there are some new projects as well that I’ll get to develop and contribute to.” He also denied that the weakened appeal of the iPhone, which has not been helped by the trade war with China, is a contributing factor to his decision. To tell from his reduced involvement in products over the last few years, the decision seems to have been long in the making.

Before he was knighted for “services to design and enterprise” by the Queen in 2012, Ive had already been hailed by Stephen Fry as one of the two Englishmen alive to have the most profound impact on people’s lives. The other, according to Fry, is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.