“Success is the enemy of curiosity. I am terrified and disgusted when people are absolutely without curiosity” — Jony Ive, mastermind designer, in a post-Apple interview.
“One surprising thing about Ive’s approach is that conversation, rather than sketches, is how he often begins a project. Thinking—and then speaking about that thinking—is the raw material he works with. ‘Language is so powerful,’ Ive says. ‘If [I say] I’m going to design a chair, think how dangerous that is. Because you’ve just said chair, you’ve just said no to a thousand ideas.’”
LoveForm is his new design firm: “One of the first employees hired by Ive was a full-time writer. Ive says LoveFrom is the only creative practice he knows of to have an on-staff scribe whose job is, in part, to help conjure into words the ideas that his team of graphic designers, architects, sound engineers and industrial designers come up with”
I am reminded of an emphatic proclamation by Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée during a lunch I had with him in 1994: “language precedes thought.”
“Jony Ive on Life After Apple” from the current WSJ Magazine: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jony-ive-apple-design-interview-profile-lovefrom-11666733971
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