Amaya Toman When "Apple and design" is said, the first thing that comes to mind for the vast majority of people is chief designer Jony Ive, despite the fact that he has not worked at Apple for more than two years. Of course, many more people were involved in the design of the products from the workshop of the Cupertino company. In today's article, we will remember five personalities who are responsible for the way Apple products look.
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A team called the Apple Industrial Design Group is responsible for the appearance of Apple products. It was built to allow product design to be designed directly within Apple's environment, minimizing the delegation of these tasks to third parties. Thanks to the fact that an internal design team works at Apple, it is also possible to make any changes and adjustments more quickly and efficiently, another indisputable advantage is the possibility of working in maximum secrecy, which is a really big priority for Apple. The team's origins date back to 1977 when Steve Jobs hired Jerry Manock to design the Apple II computer.
Hartmut Esslinger
Hartmut Esslinger, born in 1944, is a designer and inventor whose name is also associated with, for example, the consulting design firm Frog Design Inc. Esslinger started working with Apple in 1982, when he signed an exclusive two-million dollar contract with the company. During his time at Apple, he was supposed to participate, among other things, in the design strategy that would turn the company into a world-famous brand. In collaboration with the aforementioned Frogdesign, a design called Snow White was created, which Apple applied to its products from 1984 to 1990. After Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, Esslinger canceled his contract with the Cupertino company and followed Jobs into his new founded by NeXT.
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Robert Brunner
Robert Brunner worked on Apple's design team from 1989 to 1996 as its director. He was succeeded by Jony Ive. During his time at the head of Apple's design team, Robert Brunner was involved in a number of products, including the PowerBook. "When I die, my tombstone will say 'the guy who hired Jon Ivo,'" joked Brunner in 2007 in one of his interviews. Brunner remembers his time at Apple as an amazing and unique experience that taught him a lot. After his departure from Apple, Robert Brunner participated in the design of software and hardware for companies such as Beats, Adobe, Polaroid or even Square.
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Kazuo Kawasaki
Japanese designer Kazuo Kawasaki collaborated with Apple in the early 1990s. He takes credit mainly for his work on the design of some portable pieces of Apple electronics. Kawasaki also designed several different portable computer prototypes – MindTop, POPEYE, Pluto, Sweatpea and JEEP, among others. On the one hand, the prototypes of Apple portable computers designed by Kawasaki bore traces of the design typical of the first half of the nineties, but on the other hand, they did not lack certain futuristic elements. Kazuo Kawasaki is currently a professor at Osaka University, has won numerous awards, and has authored several publications. For example, he also designs glasses or the CARNA wheelchair.
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Marc Newson
Australian native Marc Newson started working with Apple in September 2014. He was one of the team members led by Jony Ive, and it was Ive who decided to follow him to his own company LoveFrom in 2019. At Apple, Marc Newson participated in the design of some key products, including the Apple Watch smart watch, in his non-Apple portfolio you can find, for example, jewelry, clothing, or even furniture. Marc Newson is a long-time friend of former Apple chief designer Jony Ivo, and in his work he favors smooth geometric lines, translucence, transparency, and almost avoids the use of sharp edges.
Evans Hankey
After the departure of Jony Ivo, Evans Hankey took charge of the industrial design team at Apple - she became its vice president. Evans Hankey has been on Apple's design team for many years, originally in charge of the studio there, and has also signed more than three hundred patents. Not much information has been released about the work that Evans Hankey is doing. But she worked under the leadership of Jony Ivo for several years, and he himself did not hide the fact that he had complete confidence in her abilities when he left Apple.
