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Dedication: Only 5 people have left Jony Ive’s team, 3 because they died

Fast Company is currently running an anecdotal series on Apple’s design department from when Ive first joined Apple to present day. The series is being published in separate articles to mark different eras of Apple’s products, finishing on September 10th, with the later articles focusing on Apple’s more recent work such as the iPad, the background to which is less well-known. Although much of the story has been told many times before, there are some fresh tidbits.

Of particular note, Fast Company says that over the entire course of Ive’s leadership, only five designers have ever left Ive’s team with only two actually quitting, the other three simply died.

So Fast Company set out to remedy that deficiency. It wasn’t easy. Precious few designers have left Sir Jonathan Ive’s industrial design group since he took over in 1996: Two quit; three died.

This is an astonishing drop-out rate for such a long period of time. In late 2012, Ive showed his appreciation for his group by bringing his entire team to London to collect prestigious awards for design and art direction.

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Comments

  1. I’ve would have stayed as well :)

  2. Paul Threatt - 11 years ago

    If industrial design is what you like to do, I can think of no better place to work. It’s a paradise of tools and budgets with a comparatively low demand for output.

  3. devanealex - 11 years ago

    It’s interesting to see that Apple’s design team is not just made up of ‘hip’ 20 year olds as seems to be the case with most other design teams (after all, ALL old people are boring – right?) but have a wide age range who can bring maturity, experience and knowledge – something that is lacking in many teams.

  4. Benjamin (@NSbenjamins) - 11 years ago

    now you know what happens if you want to leave Jony Ive’s team. LOL

  5. Seems like a pretty dangerous job, to me. Where do I apply?

  6. Nathan Seaton - 11 years ago

    Maybe Ive is just killing off people who don’t agree with him.

  7. Laughing_Boy48 - 11 years ago

    That’s a pretty small design team. Samsung has a design team with 5X as many people and they’re mostly young. That’s how they manage to turn out 20 Samsung products for every one of Apple’s products.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.


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