Unless you’re at an Apple press conference, you’ll rarely see Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive on camera. Video captured inside Apple’s Cupertino home office is forbidden. So this video of Ive talking Apple designs inside the legendary Industrial Design Lab at Apple HQ is downright unheard of.
Jonathan “Jony” Ive is Apple’s head designer. He heads up the Industrial Design Group at Apple headquarters, and he’s credited with all of Apple’s most beautiful, most intuitive hardware designs. He has more than 600 patents to his name, and is widely regarded as the most influential technology designer of the last decade.
The footage above is a clip from the documentary film Objectified, from 2009, which is about the human relationship with designed and manufactured products, and the people who make them. Ive appears in a five-minute segment, where he discusses Apple’s design philosophy and some details about the “unibody” metal process used to make the MacBook Air. It’s fascinating viewing, and a must-see for anyone who’s ever been the least bit curious about how Apple makes its products.
I can’t imagine how director Gary Hustwit, who produced and shot Objectified, convinced Apple to let him film in the legendary, ultra-secretive Design Lab, since no one has ever videoed there before (or since).
3 thoughts on “Video of Jonathan Ive in Apple’s Design Lab”
Nice to catch a corner inside the lab, but don’t pay too much attention to what Ive is saying….he’s rambling and rambling…….
Thatr was a unibody MacBook Pro with a user-removable battery, right? I’ve never seen one of those before.
Jake
Absolutely awesome video. I had to watch it a few times because between what Ive is saying about design and gawking at the background of his lab trying to pick out stuff it was hard to concentrate and take it all in. I’m really shocked this was allowed at all but you can tell a lot of preparation to make things as generic as possible took place before the camera showed up.