How to Design Simplicity
Sections: Uncategorized Jun 25th, 2003 No Comments
From Wired.com:
As the machine rose on a pedestal from the stage at San Francisco's Moscone Center, the crowd of several thousand Mac programmers gathered to witness its launch fell silent, as though in the presence of something mysterious and powerful.
After the machine's unveiling by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the chattering began. But the man primarily responsible for the stark, minimalist look of the G5, Jonathan Ive, stood quietly at the edge of the crowd, chatting with a couple of colleagues.
Wired News asked Ive to provide a couple of quick comments about the design of the G5 case.
Instead of a sound bite, Ive launched into a passionate 20-minute tour of the new computer's design. He would have gone on longer if he hadn't been cut short by a member of Apple's PR team, which keeps a tight lid on information about the company and its products.
Ive couldn't help himself. Design is his vocation. Get him started, and he'll talk at length with great sincerity and enthusiasm about the design of something as deceptively simple as a latch for an access panel.
Ive was only too delighted to describe the philosophy — and all the hard work — behind the design of the G5.
“There's an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there's real simplicity,” he said. “This looks simple, because it really is.”
Ive traced his finger over the side of the case and across the top of the G5. One continuous piece of curved aluminum forms two-thirds of the case. A large section cut out of the top forms handles at the front and the back.
“By removing material here and here,” Ive said, indicating the cut-out section, “it gives you a substantial part of the enclosure. To get aluminum at this size and to our cosmetic standards was a huge, huge challenge.”
Ive said keeping it simple was the overall design philosophy for the machine.
“We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential, but you don't see that effort,” he said. “We kept going back to the beginning again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts?
You can read more of the story here.
