Jony Ive Quotes

My father was a really good craftsman – he was a silversmith – so I grew up understanding how things were made. That’s something that’s easy to take for granted, but everything that has been made has been thought about, designed, and I think that growing up with an appreciation of the nature of objects was hugely influential to me.

It’s not too shabby is it?

Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see . . . rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.

I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity.

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.

The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.

It's sad and frustrating that we are surrounded by products that seem to testify to a complete lack of care. That's an interesting thing about an object. One object speaks volumes about the company that produced it and its values and priorities.

The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.

I think a beautiful product that doesn't work very well is ugly.

There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is.

Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people's minds.

I think there's almost a belligerence - people are frustrated with their manufactured environment. We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use. In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.

Paying attention to what’s happened historically actually helps give you some faith that you are going to find a solution. Faith isn’t a surrogate for engineering competence, but it can certainly help fuel the belief that you’re going to find a solution. And that’s important.

We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It's the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.

To create something that's genuinely new, you have to start again, and I think with great intent, you disconnect from the past.