Design and Manufacturing of Products (Essay Sample)

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Design and Manufacturing of Products
Jonathan Paul Ive is an English designer who was born in London on the 27th day of February 1967. He currently works at Apple as senior vice president of design and reports directly to Tim Cook who is the CEO. It is said that he is Apples’ soul while Cook is the head. It is in this regard that his work, contribution and impact are discussed below.
Ive followed the footsteps of his father Mike Ive, who was a silversmith and taught at a local college. His father was also involved in modeling a compulsory design curriculum for UK schools. Ive attended high school in Stafford at Chingford Foundation School, which was then known as Walton High School. In 1985, he joined Newcastle Polytechnic that is now known as Northumbria University, where he studied art and industrial design (Morris 16). He also holds an honorary doctorate from the same institution.
Ives’ first job was at Tangerine, which is a design startup at London. His very first task was to design a sink, bidet and a toilet for a client. However, his products were not accepted due to the high cost of production. During his stint at Tangerine, he worked at a variety of products ranging from washbasins to power tools. He joined Apples’ design team in 1992 after moving to San Francisco (Hirschmann 72). He was first commissioned as a consultant by Robert Brunner who was the industrial design chief at that time. Later on, he was made a full time employee of the company.
Apart from being a great designer, Ive displays superb leadership qualities for he has been leading various design teams from 1996. His leadership and direction also extends to Apples’ Human Interface software teams (O'Grady 66).
Most of Apples’ products are designed by Ive. They include iMac, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod Touch and iOS 7. MessagePad 110 and Newton second generation were among the first products that he designed. Modeling iMac in 1998 was his first design task that helped to make way for other products such as iPad and iPhone (O'Grady 69). He was appointed as the industrial design vice president same year. Most of his products have been recognized with awards and are displayed in museums permanent collections sections. He managed to convince Steve Jobs to accept white products after he presented them in a shade of moon gray. His love for white products can be traced to his years in college since most of his project products were white (Morris 36).
Ives’ office is the only private one in Apples’ studio of design. Its design is simple with just a desk and no pictures. The whole design studio is very restricted such that even the top executives of Apple are not allowed inside. His work is very confidential; he is not allowed to disclose details of a product that is on the process of being designed even to his family members (O'Grady 33).
Ive has been reco...