Top 45 Jonathan Ive Quotes

I left London in 1992, but I’m there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting.

There are some shocking cars on the road.

The form of computers has never been important, with speed and performance being the only things that mattered.

Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don’t include is as important as what we do include.

We shouldn’t be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can’t imagine any other way.

I don’t know how we can compare the old watches we know with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.

There’s no other product that changes function like the computer.

Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.

When something’s made in the smallest volume – as a one-off couture piece – or in large quantities, deep care is critical to determine authentic, successful design and, ultimately, manufacture.

If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

There was a ‘Wired’ cover that had a big Apple logo with a crown of barbed wire as thorns, and underneath it just said, ‘Pray.’ I remember this because of how upsetting it was. Basically saying either it’s going to just go out of business or be bought.

There is a clear goal and it isn’t to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive – if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.

At the start of the process the idea is just a thought – very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.

Even in high school, I was keenly aware of this remarkable tradition that the U.K. had of designing and making.

What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

You cannot disconnect the form from the material – the material informs the form.

People’s interest is in the product, not in its authorship.

Apple’s Industrial Design team is harder to get into than the Illuminati, and part of the reason is because no one leaves. In the last 15 years, not one of the 18 designers has ditched Apple for greener pastures.

The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design.

Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.

I think it’s important that we learn how to draw and to make something and to do it directly. To understand the properties you’re working with by manipulating them and transforming them yourself.

We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable, that leave you with the sense that that’s the only possible solution that makes sense.

I think a beautiful product that doesn’t work very well is ugly.

So much of my background is about making: physically doing it myself.

When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.

I feel that it’s lovely when, as a user, you’re not aware of the complexity.

There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.

It’s great if you can find what you love to do. Finding it is one thing, but then to be able to practise that and be preoccupied with that is another.

The iPhone was broadly dismissed. The iPod was broadly dismissed. The iPad was probably more copiously written off as a large iPod.

I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left.

A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.

When you do everything to make the very best product, it also means you’re very focused on just a few products.

Perhaps I’d like to design cars, but I don’t think I’d be much good at it.

Often when I talk about what I do, making isn’t just this inevitable function tacked on at the end.

Once, even the simple metal needle challenged the conventional thinking of a time.

When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.

Innovation at Apple has always been a team game. It has always been a case where you have a number of small groups working together.

Good is the enemy of great.

I think that we’re on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the ’70s, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.

Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.

The best ideas start as conversations.

There’s no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.

If you expect me to buy something where all I can sense is carelessness, actually I think that is personally offensive.