How Apple design guru Jony Ive discovered his passion

Getty Images/Michael Kovac

Apple design guru Jony Ive described finding his passion in a recent Financial Times profile.

Ive studied design at Northumbria University, but his interest in making things goes back much earlier than that.

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"I wasn't sure what the activity was called, but when I was seven or eight, I knew that I enjoyed drawing and making, and that the drawing was in service of the making," he said. "I didn't really know that this was called design."

Ive said his passion stemmed from asking about the purpose of objects and their construction.

"I was just fascinated by our physical environment and intrigued by why things were the way they were," he said. "'Why is the handle on the top?', 'Why is the hinge that shape?' I see design as a way you look at the world and as a thought process."

Ive's love of drawing created an disdain for computers that's now kind of ironic given his career path.

"I was inherently sceptical and didn't like using a computer at art school," he said. "I remember discovering the Mac just at the end of my course."

After university, Ive founded his own design studio. By 1992 he had joined Apple in Cupertino.

You can read the full FT profile here>>