Jony Ive no longer works at Apple

Jony Ive has left Apple, Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

Apple has removed Jony Ive’s bio from its executive leadership page as the company’s former Chief Design Officer quits the company, as announced earlier in 2019.

Happy Thanksgiving

New design team leaders Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer and are not currently represented on the page.

This suggests that Apple’s  designers are no longer directly represented within the company’s top leadership — which will doubtless raise some speculations.

It’s not a complete break. Ive will still do some work on a consultancy basis from the new firm he left Apple to create, LoveFrom, which will include the company as a client. His friend, Marc Newsom, will also work with him there.

Speaking when his retirement was announced, he said:

“After nearly 30 years and countless projects, I am most proud of the lasting work we have done to create a design team, process and culture at Apple that is without peer. Today it is stronger, more vibrant and more talented than at any point in Apple’s history.”

“The team will certainly thrive under the excellent leadership of Evans, Alan and Jeff, who have been among my closest collaborators. I have the utmost confidence in my designer colleagues at Apple, who remain my closest friends, and I look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

Who can forget the classic iPod?

Ive joined Apple in 1992 and became close to CEO, Steve Jobs when the latter returned to the company in ’97. Ive designed the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and many more iconic devices, including the company’s largest project yet, Apple Park.

“Our goal was to design something that would become iconic,” said Apple chief designer, Jony Ive, in a promotional video published on October 23, 2001, when the iPod was launched.

“Often you can put all of your energy into the primary product that you forget that your actual experience is an aggregation of the product plus all of these peripheral objects like the packaging and shipping box,” he also said, when announcing the now unavailable (and hideously expensive) Designed By Apple in California book.

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