Book review: “Jony Ive The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products”
If you haven’t read the book “Jony Ive The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products” by Leander Kahney you have to do it.
Frankly speaking, I had a plan to read the book about Steve Jobs firstly. But while I was searching for that book I found another one. Right, the book is about Jony Ive. I was curious about Apple history from the design side.
I love Apple products. I love gadgets and package design. I respect their approach to software development. Apple’s guys launch cool products and they know how to position them on the market. And one more important thing they know how to make people around the world fall in love with their products.
I discovered lots of new facts from this book. For example, I was surprised to know that Jony Ive is British and his father cultivated the love of industrial design to him.
Jony’s education was based on the Bauhaus principles. It includes perfect quality, high technology, and minimalism. These features were traced in his projects. Jony didn’t share the approach of product decorations. He required the necessity of all details. The main idea of Jony’s design was to make the design disappear.
Jony always created user-friendly products. He designed some elements that make users touch gadgets. For example, iBook was designed with a handle. On the one hand, iBook was portable. On the other hand, the purpose of this feature was to make the relations between machines and customers stronger.
Also, Jony’s attitude to the product packaging was meaningful. Designers spent lots of time designing it for customers’ delight. The importance of the product packing in Apple was established from iPod launching.
In this book, the author often mentioned the details about a collaboration between Jony Ive and Steve Jobs. They’ve worked closely for about 13 years. Their views often were the same. Steve’s slogan was: “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains”.
To sum up, this is a book must-read for all designers (not only, of course). As for me, reading was quite slow because I googled something all the time. Now I have a dream to get to Apple Museum to see machines by myself. To become closer to this great story.
P.S. I’ve even saved some pictures to my album. I can’t believe that all these computers were forerunners of modern iMacs and MacBooks. Just look at them, they are so lovely!
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it 🙏
