iVe 18 Sep 2006

BusinessWeek puts Jonathan Ive under the spotlight this month. (Ive is Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple or as, BW puts it:"the man who, after Jobs, is most responsible for Apple's amazing ability to dazzle and delight with its famous products").

The article provides some fascinating insights into Ive's design process. For example, when designing the first iMac, Ive was determined to ditch the standard "grey box" aesthetic favoured by all PC manufacturers at the time. To do so however, required that he understand how to make a plastic shell look exciting rather than cheap and tacky. How did he develop such an understanding? He and his team visited a candy factory to study the finer points of jelly bean making.

Read BusinessWeek's article in full here.

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