Jonathan iVe - design sutras

Read this piece on the world's 100 most creative people on fastcompay.com on my feed-reader! Perhaps predictably the fabled Apple design head Jonathan iVe tops this list.

This week as I slip into a new job and a project on the Millenials, for some strange reason, I am pulled towards design and design related thots.

Few design sutras from the article gleaned from Jon's profile.

1. Design According to Ive - "There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is." (Wired)

2. Referring to the Apple design team - "The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work." (Interview for Design Museum,2003)

3. "Very often design is the most immediate and explicit way of defining what products become in people's minds." (Interview for BBC, 2002)

This is such a profound revelation. Often in most agencies, planners(me-in-the-immediate-past included) waste a lot many hours unlocking the meaning of the brand only to discover that the design maybe at variance with the meaning. More frightfully, the design and the brand communication happen in separate silos. Brand communicators and the design guys are frequently not in sync with each other.

4. "With technology, the function is much more abstract to users, so the product's meaning is almost entirely defined by the designer."

And it's so strange and sad that product design in many companies is totally delinked from marketing's hunt for meaning.

5. "Something like the iPod is a melding of design and user experience and marketing and pop culture, and you don't achieve that without coordination throughout the company. And for that you need a CEO who gets it."

Mental note - Must catch more of iVe's interviews on the www.