Alan Dye, Jony Ive, and Richard Howarth
Apple’s Jony Ive has served as the company’s Senior Vice President of Design for several years now, but Apple has announced today that the executive is being named Chief Design Officer (a newly-created position). Additionally, Ive and will be handing the managerial reins of both the industrial and software design units at Apple over to two new leaders on July 1st.
Richard Howarth will become VP of Industrial Design and focus on hardware. Howarth has been part of the iPhone team since the very first generation of the device was in development.
Alan Dye will now be VP of User Interface Design, which covers both desktop and mobile devices. He was a key player in iOS 7’s major redesign as well as the work on the new Watch OS interface. Both of these executives were mentioned as key Apple employees during the New Yorker and WIRED Apple Watch profiles earlier this year.
Ive’s new role will still leave him in charge of the company’s hardware and software design teams overall, but allowing others to handle the day-to-day affairs of each design group will free him up for other tasks. Among those other tasks, Ive says, is a focus on the design of Apple’s retail stores and new campus.
In fact, Ive’s part in designing the new campus extends beyond the building itself. He is responsible for designing a number of other items, such as the desks and chairs that will be used by employees.
The leadership change was first announced in a Telegraph profile by Stephen Fry today. An email from CEO Tim Cook to Apple employees, obtained by our Mark Gurman, confirmed the change today and helped flesh out the details of Ive’s new position and those of his new design leaders:
Team,
I have exciting news to share with you today. I am happy to announce that Jony Ive is being promoted to the newly created position of Chief Design Officer at Apple.
Jony is one of the most talented and accomplished designers of his generation, with an astonishing 5000 design and utility patents to his name. His new role is a reflection of the scope of work he has been doing at Apple for some time. Jony’s design responsibilities have expanded from hardware and, more recently, software UI to the look and feel of Apple retail stores, our new campus in Cupertino, product packaging and many other parts of our company.
Design is one of the most important ways we communicate with our customers, and our reputation for world-class design differentiates Apple from every other company in the world. As Chief Design Officer, Jony will remain responsible for all of our design, focusing entirely on current design projects, new ideas and future initiatives. On July 1, he will hand off his day-to-day managerial responsibilities of ID and UI to Richard Howarth, our new vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, our new vice president of User Interface Design.
Richard, Alan and Jony have been working together as colleagues and friends for many years. Richard has been a member of the Design team for two decades, and in that time he has been a key contributor to the design of each generation of iPhone, Mac, and practically every other Apple product. Alan started at Apple nine years ago on the Marcom team, and helped Jony build the UI team which collaborated with ID, Software Engineering and countless other groups on groundbreaking projects like iOS 7, iOS 8 and Apple Watch.
Please join me in congratulating these three exceptionally talented designers on their new roles at Apple.
Tim
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Maybe someone will final fix those horrible iOS7 folders now. Extremely poor use of screen real estate.
By comparison the parting of the desktop for iOS6 folders was beautiful. These are extremely ugly.
Don’t count on it. Dye was part of the iOS 7 team. Unfortunately it looks like they’re going to continue in that direction.
Completely disagree. Folders icons in iOS 7 and beyond now accurately reflect their contents and their arraignment. The folder icon is a square with 3×3 grid of icons inside. When you open the folders, the contents remain that way. There are also folder pages (allowing effectively infinite storage), and the user’s wallpaper is maintained – both in the general background and in the blurred folder background.
By comparison, the iOS 6 folders crackws open the home screen, shoves the wallpaper out of the way to expose the imaginary linen that lies beneath. The folder icon did not accurately represent the folder’s contents. The app limit was much smaller and unintuitively arbitrary – if you have an iPhone 4, you an fit 12. If you have an iPhone 5, you can fit 16.
You’re entitled to like what you like. But IMO it’s not an informed opinion to simply call the new ones horrible and extremely poor – and using that to question Jony Ive’s design chops. It seems more a case of “weren’t things great in the old days?” rather than an objective comparison of pros and cons.
well, you can say Pot-A-To, I say Potato.
Either way, when users are unable to easily access features because of design elements, it’s kind of funny that so many people are quick to blame the user for not using it right. It’s like “Your Holding It Wrong” all over again:
How DARE you confuse taste and preference with having an informed opinion? You might have absolutely no aesthetic sense, but that doesn’t make my opinion less informed.
Pages and pages of icons in a folder are FAR less intuitive. You can effectively bury stuff in current folders such that you can forget they’re there. That’s not a positive UX. The current method uses about 60% of the screen, and that’s being generous.
I could go on for quite a while as to how informed my opinion is, but since you are so full of yourself, I doubt you’d bother absorbing it.
Seriously. Just say “congratulations” and be done with it.
Whimpering little kiss-ass.
Well deserved!
I completely agree! With the loss of SJ – Jony is the link that continues the vision.
To lose Ive would be to lose the soul and vision of Apple.
This is great but also a bit troubling news. Jony will have more free time to focus on better design. At the same time, Apple is introducing another management layer. Let’s wait and see.
That’s a great point although it’s a much bigger company now with more things to design, including buildings and campuses.
what I think Jonny Ive should do is buy a few German Automobiles; see if he enjoys driving them around town without license plates.
German engineering is darn good stuff; but as part of owning British Automobiles, you’re really limited to Exclusively taking the car to the dealer to get any repair. You really can’t work on a British Automobile yourself.
Say what now?
I’m no mechanic, but exactly why can’t you work on a British car yourself? Are they made of unobtainium? The basics of how all non-electric cars are the same, aren’t they? Or am I missing something.
iOS has been horrible since iOS 7… could he PLEASE just focus on hardware design??
Oh, that failed too with iPhone 6.. damn..
My iPhone 6 is perfectly fine. I find iOS 7 and 8 more useful than any of the previous versions of iOS
Well, there is some great functions in those updates, but the UI was a set-back in my book. Change for the change, not because the old UI was broken. And there is sooooo many places where the UI is no longer obvious! Like the new Music app.. damn!
The hardware design of the iPhone 6 is shit! It’s simply too big, even for my big hands!
How in the WORLD can they place the power button so you press the volume buttons instead??
“It has to be closer to you fingers… ” well, maybe, but it FAILS! and you press the wrong button all the time.
An screen so big, so you have to make workarounds to bring the content down to your fingers… FAIL!
Wow marook. Pressing the power button is no problem for me, I don’t hit the volume buttons.
P.S. Most people wanted the bigger screen, workarounds or not.
I’m sure we’ll see a smaller iPhone sometime soon. I love my iPhone 6. It’s the perfect size for me but I kinda wish they put more of the landscape view in the stock iOS apps like they did with the 6 Plus.
Have you ever used the countdown timer? Did you use it in earlier versions of iOS? iOS 7 made it less than wonderful to use IMHO and I use it daily.
@rwanderman. Siri sets the timer perfectly fine for me. I use Siri more often than actually opening the timer (or other) app to set a time . . .
Some people won’t be satisfied until Apple returns to stitched leather and green felt. I think they’re in for a long wait.
iOS 6 was horrible. iOS 7 and iOS 8 design is far superior. The worst thing they did with iOS 6 was the color matching status bars, it was so horrible it’s unreal. You barely had any contrast for the status bar at all, you could hardly read the time.
I own a 6Plus and I love the screen real estate, but I COMPLETELY agree with you about putting buttons opposite each other. It was a monumentally stupid design choice to put the lock button opposite the volume buttons, and I wanted to make sure I voiced that support. You’re absolutely right, and anyone who disagrees with you on this particular point, is a liar.
A liar, or smart enough to extend their thumb above where their other fingers wrap around the other side of the phone.
I don’t know about the 6 plus. But I’d take this lock button over the old any day. The phone is just too big for trying to reach the top of it.
Can we now please stop making things thinner at the expense of battery life and keyboard usability?
Just as long as they stop having him do voice overs on every video. Mix it up… I get tiered of Johnny over and over again.
I disagree. I wouldn’t want anyone but Jony to do the voice overs.
I’d settle for Ian McKellen.
Check out Twitter after an Apple event. You’ll be amazed at how many people want whatever Apple’s new fanged thing is just because of his videos.
They let quite a few people talk in those videos – Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, Bob Mansfield, Dan Riccio, Jeff Williams, and Jay Blahnik, namely. Ive obviously is the most omnipresent, but it works. He’s in charge of design, and Apple is a design-centric company.
Not to mention, his voice is smooth and sophisticated. I would tear my ears off if I had to listen to Jay Blank for more than 2 minutes :)
This is terrible news! Not so much on the hardware side, but on software. Alan Dye is a horrific UI designer, and had a major hand in how ugly iOS 7 & 8 turned out to be (those icons still make my eyes bleed). I wish Apple had Matias Duarte running their UI design. Android Lollipop is gorgeous and unfortunately Apple have lost the crown in terms of design to the guys at Google. Sad but true.
Interesting that this came out on a holiday. I wonder if it will get an official press release tomorrow.
I’ll play the devils advocate here. Ive could be tired and burnt out and instead of him quiting, Apple created a new position for him and took much of the stressful day to day operations off of Ives plate. This isn’t a bad thing but it’s not a good thing either.
You might be right but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing. Someone who is completely burned out isn’t going to do their best work. Let his lieutenants focus on the day to day stuff so he can focus on bigger, more strategic long term thing, or just things that are of more interest to him, like Campus 2 and Apple stores.
Article talks about Ive designing Tables and Chairs. Seems like Ive is one his way to just designing stuff that he likes and enjoys, like Marc Newsome does.
Bingo. That big New Yorker piece that was published a few months back hinted at him being over worked and tired of designing iPhones. I think this move is to take some work off his plate, and to set up his eventual successors.
Damned if he stays, damned if he goes… On the one hand, it’s decried as micromanagement if he supervises the day-to-day running of both hardware and software design while on t’other, it’s creating excessive management layers if Apple now delegates these tasks to other capable eyes and hands…
IMHO, it was only a matter of time before Jony relinquished the burdensome reins of Scott Forstall’s erstwhile domain and, having successfully achieved a stable and fairly seamless transition, Apple Inc is more than delighted to free him up to ride of to further campaigns within the Walled Garden, iRetail Malls and iSpaceShip…
This Jony guy… I think he can go far…
Is it just me or is Ive looking more and more like a fat Steve? He’s only missing the circular glasses!
It’s just you.
Now designing Apple chairs and tables, with glowing Apple logo in the back of the chair, and after a few years later the accountants go through the expenses and wonder why it was necessary to spend over 20$ million on just chairs and tables? And toilets that flush based on a force sensor, the harder you press, the more water gets flushed.
But Apple seems to be in a good condition as of right now.
If Jony can make working at Apple – physically working at Apple HQ – the most desirable experience in the industry, he will have paid off the investment in furniture and architecture.
Apple could literally throw away $20M each day for 26 years and still have cash.
Now who will narrate the Apple videos from now on?
Wait, still Jony? Alright then.
I think he’s made a LOT of horrible design decisions in both software (iOS 7 & 8 and OS X Yosemite) and hardware (the non-ecpandable trashcan Mac Pro, the one port MacBook, making all the new Macs so thin the RAM has to be soldered-in and the stupid protruding cameras on the new thinner iPhones) The guy is a hack who maybe had one or two good ideas in his life and is milking them for all they’re worth. Give me a thicker iPhone with better battery life and expandable Macs! I’m sick of his electronic anorexia! Form should follow function, not the other way around. He should be fired, not promoted.
Who has better designs than Jony Ive?
I don’t know, but Apple should be looking. Jobs liked the design of the Sony Vaio so much he offered to let Sony put OS X on it. Perhaps the guy who designed that. The community of designers is huge, Ive is just famous and had Jobs to rein him in. Jobs is gone and Ive is out of control.
‘Form should follow function, not the other way around.’ ‘and the stupid protruding cameras on the new thinner iphones’
Form followed function here. In case you didn’t realize that. Ive probably was kept up nights thinking about the fact that the camera would protrude in order to keep it the same/better quality. If function followed form there, the camera wouldn’t protrude, it would have been made worse, to accommodate the thinner phone.
As for him making terrible design decisions. Yeah, I’ll not trust the random guy’s rant on forums about design. Haha. I’d pay to see your designs.
In the case of the camera, the case could have been made a little thicker which would have allowed for a flat phone in addition to room for a higher capacity battery and possibly OIS in the 6 and not just the 6+. How about the 15″ MBP? Too thin for RAM slots so it’s limited to a maximum of 16 GB while the CPU can use up to 32 GB. Good design decision? How about the loss of (or intermittent nature) of the iTunes sidebar? It used to be the go-to area for information and control. A two finger tap on my device and tap transfer purchases, now it’s hidden under File > Devices > Transfer Purchases.
One of the articles on THIS blog had him admitting that 60% of iPhone users would prefer thicker iPhones, he doesn’t care. Good way to please your customers?
As if Ive makes all of these decisions when designing a product. Some of these choices are driven by marketing, engineering, operations, etc. But below I can see you’re blaming him for the loss of the iTunes sidebar, so apparently everything is Ive’s fault.
Ive is in charge of software interface design. I blame him for ALL the interface atrocities committed during his watch. Why not, they had to pass his approval before implementation.
I think creating this new post of CDO for Ive is very important in enabling Apple to have a consistent design language just as it did under Steve Jobs. But my biggest questions are two:
1. What will Marc Newsons role be?
2. Design is not just how it looks but how it works and Forstall was king at this(in terms of software). Will Johny Ive be able to make the right design choices in the software department in terms of how software works?
I hope the two people stepping up are really good because having Ive’s skills applied to the new HA building (chairs and desks!!!) are meaningless to me and other consumers. I have to assume cook and the rest know what’s best for product design.
This is fantastic! Tim Cook and Apple are firmly solidifying Apple as a design-led corporation. I wonder if he will still carry the SVP title (ie. SVP and CDO), the same way Luca Maestri is SVP and CFO. If it’s solely CDO, this sets an even stronger precedent as Tim Cook is the only officer solely carrying a C-title.
Does it means that Apple will spend their time more with bloated corporate bureaucracy rather than creating agood product?
This is a very respectable move upward for Jony and the product design field in general. More companies should follow suit and make “DESIGN” a functional area reporting directly to the CEO, thus on the same playing field as well established functions, like engineering, production, sales, marketing or controlling. Having someone responsible for the design of everything within a company provides a unique opportunity to eliminate competing design styles and their competing impressions left on customers who not only buy products, but also visit the company’s websites, stores and service centers. I think Jony is on his way to becoming the next CEO of Apple.
I’m still not sure why people think this announcement portends to a retirement. If anything this announcement signals that Ive is able to write his own ticket and do whatever he wants at Apple. I would think that would make him less likely to retire.