Jony Ive will depart Apple to start his own company

[Karlston]

Jony Ive will depart Apple to start his own company

Apple will be one of his new business' key clients, however.

Enlarge / Jony Ive speaks onstage during the 2017 New Yorker TechFest in New York City.

Brian Ach/Getty Images

Jony Ive, Apple's longtime design chief, will depart Apple to form his own independent design company, according to a press release distributed by Apple today. While he will no longer be an employee, he will count Apple among his clients at the new firm, according to both parties.

 

Ive's new company will be called LoveForm. It will be based in California, at least to start, and will launch in 2020 after a transition period later this year, according to a Financial Times article about the change.

 

"While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved—I hope for many, many years to come. This just seems like a natural and gentle time to make this change," Ive told Financial Times. CEO Tim Cook also commented to Financial Times in his usual upbeat voice, saying, "We get to continue with the same team that we've had for a long time and have the pleasure of continuing to work with Jony. I can't imagine a better result."

 

Ive has been Apple's Chief Design Officer since 2015, but he has worked at the company in various design roles for two decades. He was often the voice of Apple's industrial design teams in highly stylized (and mocked) design videos, and his partnership with former CEO Steve Jobs on product design was written about at length in the tech press over the years.

 

Ive went on to oversee software and UX design in addition to hardware design after the departure of Scott Forstall, and he was a key player in planning Apple's new Apple Park campus in Cupertino. Additionally, Ive was knighted by the Queen of England on 2012 and is Chancellor of the Royal College of Art in London.

 

Apple is not naming a direct successor at this time. Apple VP of industrial design Evans Hankey and VP of human interface design Alan Dye will report to chief operating officer Jeff Williams, who played a role in the development of the Apple Watch and who will "spend more of his time working with the design team in their studio," according to Apple's press release.

Apple turnover

Apple has seen some other turnover of key senior talent lately. Retail head Angela Ahrendts, who joined the company from Burberry on 2014, departed in April. And key Apple A-series CPU architect Gerard Williams III left the company earlier this year, though it is possible some aspect of his role may have already been filled by ARM's Mike Filippo.

 

As to what to expect from Ive and his company next, he was tight-lipped. Ive told the Financial Times: "There are products that we have been working on for a number of years. I'm beyond excited that I get to continue working on those, and there are some new projects as well that I'll get to develop and contribute to."

 

 

 

Source: Jony Ive will depart Apple to start his own company (Ars Technica)

[The AchieVer]

Jony Ive Leaves Apple But He’ll Still Design the Next iPhones 

 

Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer and the man responsible for several iPhone, iPad, iOS generations, has decided to leave the company in order to create his own design firm.

Ive, however, will continue to work with Apple, as the Cupertino-based tech giant will become the primary client of his new design company, which means that the next iPhones would still be his creations.

Ive spent more than 20 years at Apple, and he says LoveFrom, the name of his company, is inspired by none other than Steve Jobs.

“There was an employee meeting a number of years ago and Steve [Jobs] was talking . . . He [said] that one of the fundamental motivations was that when you make something with love and with care, even though you probably will never meet . . . the people that you’re making it for, and you’ll never shake their hand, by making something with care, you are expressing your gratitude to humanity, to the species,” he said in an interview with FT.

“I so identified with that motivation and was moved by his description. So my new company is called ‘LoveFrom’. It succinctly speaks to why I do what I do.”Apple, LoveFrom’s top clientIn a press release (embedded below), Apple says the design team leaders Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer.

While LoveFrom will also sign other clients, Ive’s company will design several key Apple products in the coming years.

“Apple will continue to benefit from Jony’s talents by working directly with him on exclusive projects, and through the ongoing work of the brilliant and passionate design team he has built. After so many years working closely together, I’m happy that our relationship continues to evolve and I look forward to working with Jony long into the future,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

Marc Newson, one of the leading Apple designers who joined the company five years ago, will leave the Cupertino-based firm as well to join LoveFrom.

 

 

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