Evolution of Apple Design
This is my article translated into English. Enjoy reading!
Much is said about the design of the Apple, about how it is “minimal” and “beautiful.” However, few seem to have delved into the reasons for Apple’s excellent results. The sales success of Apple is not solely due to product design, but if today the term “design” is so strongly associated with the Californian company, much of the credit is due to Jony Ive and his Industrial Design Center (IDC). But how did we arrive at today’s design, and what differences are there compared to previous products?
Design of Early Apple (1981–1996)
As revealed by numerous recent books and films, the Macintosh was designed by the first Apple design team at the request of Steve Jobs¹. However, dissatisfied with the quality of Apple’s product range, especially the heterogeneity of the offering, Jobs announced a competition among some design studios. German designer Hartmut Esslinger immediately captivated Jobs with innovative proposals, and soon after, the collaboration gave rise to Frog Design, which became a consultant for Apple, and the style nicknamed “Snow White,” which characterized Apple’s design for several years. After a short time, the Californian company was already trying to create an internal team to rid itself of Frog’s hefty fees. The executives of the time, unsure of what to do, attempted to hire another famous designer. The difficulties in dealing with world-renowned figures such as Giorgetto Giugiaro², Mario Bellini, and Luigi Colani are evident from the stories, and they obtained nothing but hefty fees. Finally, almost by chance, they hired Robert Brunner, the young founder of Lunar Design, to shape the Apple IDC.
The Designer-Entrepreneur Relationship
Today, I wouldn’t talk about Jony Ive and Apple design if Steve Jobs hadn’t returned in 1997. Shortly after Brunner left the leadership of the IDC (1996) due to friction with management, Ive, the new head, was on the verge of returning to England. Apple was going through its deepest crisis since its inception and, due to managerial choices, couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, the CEOs who succeeded John Sculley couldn’t provide a clear direction to the company. Jobs, upon his return, not only restored order to Apple but also placed design at the center of the process, allowing Ive and his team to express themselves to the fullest to create what we know.
It has always been the relationship between the entrepreneur and the designer that has infused great quality into products. From Olivetti to Gavina, passing through Brionvega and many others, only the will of the entrepreneur has allowed the realization of all the incredible products we admire today. If a manager interested only in profit and lacking product culture had been at the helm, we would not have any of this. Not only would I not write about Ive, but we wouldn’t even talk about Apple’s success. In fact, until its co-founder returned, the battle between IDC and the design department (R&D) at the Californian company was a daily occurrence, and often the latter prevailed. With Jobs’ return, the roles reversed, moving from “dressing” products to designing them based on design. Because design is not about making things “beautiful” but has to do with its functioning and the user who will use it³. The success of Apple’s design is due to the synergy between an enlightened entrepreneur and a brilliant designer. I think Apple embodies the best of American pragmatism with an added touch of the madness and innovation that Italian entrepreneurs managed to demonstrate in the 1960s and 1970s.
The iMac, the First Example of the Jobs/Ive Collaboration
Even though it falls more into styling than industrial design and with some youthful naivety, the iMac was the first example of the Jobs/Ive collaboration, creating a discontinuity with the past and laying the foundations for the future of the American brand.
From Styling to Industrial Design
With a simple game, we can understand how Ive’s team has improved the design process: if we look at the iMac timeline, we realize that in nineteen years, a lot has changed for the better. From the first iMac to the latest one, we see not only a maturation of style and greater design cleanliness but also a astonishing technological mastery of aluminum. The first iMac is a “jelly bean,” a tempting, colorful candy that, with its play of colors, transparencies, and rounded shapes, winked at users to be more “affable” and “human” compared to the “gray boxes” seen at the end of the nineties. For me, this operation can more easily fit into a marketing strategy than in the world of design. If we look at the iMac 1997 today, it is clearly a product of that period. However, a good project never ages. Observing the computer carefully, one can perceive that the designers were more focused on “aesthetics” than industrialization and design efficiency. Aside from the difficulty in perfecting translucent material and organizing internal components visible externally, what is understood is that the design team worked a lot on design/form and less on industrial design. The Yo-Yo-shaped mouse (uncomfortable to use) itself represents a project more focused on “forms” than on a good design. In simple terms, it can be said that they favored visual impact a lot to impress the user and paid less attention to the industrial process.
“The design is not about making things beautiful but has to do with its functioning and the user who will use it.”
If we look at more recent projects, from the first iPod Mini, through the PowerMac G5, to the latest MacBook Pro and iMac, industrialization and design simplification are a continuous crescendo. The number of internal components has been reduced to a minimum, the pieces that make up the exterior can be counted on one hand; the design is clean, essential, refined, much more mature than in the past. The qualitative leap is not only attributable to design but, above all, concerns the leadership that Ive’s team has been able to acquire over time. In fact, not only does the team choose the technology, but it also deals with the process and fine-tuning of the production details of each product. With the first iPod Mini, Apple designers began studying aluminum and its production processes, especially extrusion. From this phase, the first product was born, which later allowed us to arrive, a few years later, at milled “unibody” with CNC machines. This is the turning point. Apple’s design is unique because it also has access to unique technologies.
Why aluminum? Today, in hindsight, it is easily understood, but it must not have been easy at the beginning. Designers must have intuited that aluminum would not only improve the design of products but also significantly reduce the thickness and number of components since it could be an aesthetic box and a load-bearing structure, eliminating the bulky internal metal frames needed to secure electronic components. In this whole process of industrialization, everyone who has benefited is not only the design and users but also the company itself. This would not have been possible if there had not been an IDC that explored different materials and production processes. Above all, it would not have been possible if the company had not believed in it blindly. CNC (computer numerical control) technology before Apple was considered expensive and suitable for small luxury productions. The merit of Ive’s team was to believe in a material and a production process and convince their company to invest its future in this direction. In this, the IDC-company pairing has proven to be excellent, highlighting an incredible example of industrial design to everyone. In fact, the new computers have proven to be more robust than the competition (they have fewer components), of superior quality (metal is better than plastic), more beautiful (fewer pieces mean fewer aesthetic defects in assembly), more recyclable (aluminum is completely reusable at the end of its life), and less expensive than previous ones. Overall, the customer experience has improved.
“For years, the PC industry has been made up of companies competing on two things: prices and specifications. So people usually said ‘I have the biggest drive’ or ‘I have the fastest processor’ or — in the camera sector — ‘I have more megapixels.’
The truth is, customers want a great experience, and they want quality. They want every time they use the product to be exceptional. And with those products, it rarely happens.
These are tricks that tech companies invent to make up for shortcomings in the user experience; that’s why they always talk about specifications.”
Tim Cook — 2013
Industrial Design and User Experience
A small reflection on “user experience” is necessary to clarify some points that may be unclear. In this article, there has been much talk of industrialization and production efficiency. Some may wonder what they have to do with the user experience, but above all, why the quality of projects has improved when they have moved into the hands of designers. The answer is very simple: the designer always has the user and their final experience in mind; all compromises and decisions made will be aimed at improving this experience. The Apple team has always stood out for putting the user at the center compared to other brands. The difficulty was in uniting a great user experience with industrialization and production efficiency at the same level. In this, Apple has led the way and demonstrated that there is a very valid collaboration between IDC and R&D in the development of products. Following the initial path of bringing design to the center of design, since 2012, Ive has also been responsible for Human Interface. Interaction with products will play an increasingly important and discriminating role in commercial success. Not only that, products are becoming increasingly difficult to use and therefore require a role that can help the user navigate through increasingly complex interactions. In 2019, Ive left Apple to start work as an independent designer while continuing to collaborate as an external consultant.
Conclusion
Design has little to do with beauty, much more with users and the product development process. The purpose of a designer is not to “make things beautiful” or create “beautiful graphics.” The role of a designer is to reconcile form, function, usability, and industrial needs. Although ideas can come from multiple skills and people, the designer’s main task is to find a balance between user needs and industry needs. Users seek innovation, simplicity, ease of use, emotion (citing Donald Norman’s Emotional Design⁵), formal accuracy, and reasonable prices; while the industry seeks construction simplicity, cost containment, and commercial success. In recent years, Apple has demonstrated that it has succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the various forces at play by bringing design back to the center of design. You can find an interesting article (in English) on Apple’s product development process at this link.
Who is Jonathan Ive: “Jony” Jonathan Paul Ive, English, born in 1967 in Chingford, England; he studied at Northumbria University in Newcastle. After some experience as a freelance designer, he was hired by Apple in 1992 to be part of the ID team created by Robert Brunner. In 1996, he became head of the ID group, a role he still holds today. Since 2012, he has also been responsible for Apple’s Human Interface. Since 2019, he is no longer part of the Apple team but will continue to collaborate externally.
- Jony Ive: Il genio che ha dato forma alla Apple, Leander Kahney, Sperling&Kupfer
- Nel maggio 2010 Volkswagen AG acquistato il 90% di Italdesign
- Frase attribuita a Steve Jobs; dal libro Jony Ive: Il genio che ha dato forma alla Apple, Leander Kahney, Sperling&Kupfer
- Design italiano del XX secolo, Aldo Colonetti, Elena Brigi, Valentina Croci, Giunti
- Emotional design Perché amiamo (o odiamo) gli oggetti di tutti i giorni,Donald Norman, Apogeo, 2004