The Core77 design blog has scored a rare interview with Jonathan Ive, ostensibly about the iPhone 4, but really about the way a physical and emotional connection to raw materials can not be extracurricular to design.
“It is that direct experience, the hands-on, that is the key; like experiencing the iPhone 4 itself, it cannot be done without the physical connection. “It’s very hard to learn about materials academically, by reading about them or watching videos about them; the only way you truly understand a material is by making things with it,” Ive explains, going on to add that years upon years of making his own models with his own hands is what gave him a deep understanding of the materials he’s worked. “And it’s important to develop that appetite to want to make something, to be inquisitive about the material world, to want to truly understand a material on that level.”
It’s a fantastic read: an uncommon glimpse into the mind of one of the most brilliant (and soft-spoken) visionaries in tech. Very much worth a read.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
