Jony Ive: Work and Love
Patrick Collison and Jony Ive on GDP, Beauty, Design, and Freud.
I’m on a mission to uncover why some people change the world and others just live in it. Whenever I run across something interesting or helpful, I collect it here in my newsletter.
This last week, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison hosted a fireside chat with Jony Ive, the legendary designer who helped shaped the products and prospects of Apple for decades.
Both are outsiders who came to California to put a dent in the universe. Both are changing the world. Patrick and his brother John Collison set out to grow the GDP of the internet. See this helpful note from Stripe’s website for prospective employees who are wondering if they might be a good match for the company.
What a goal! to grow the GDP of the internet… And by all accounts, Stripe is well on its way. And yet this isn’t done in any typical way. Stripe combines an obsession for speed with the seemingly unreconcilable desire for beauty—to do things well. Here is a short clip with the Collison brothers discussing beauty.
This makes Patrick’s conversation with Design Demi-God, Jony Ive all the more interesting.
But back to Jony.. and his role at Apple and beyond.
Jony Ive fell in love with the Mac in his last year at design school north of London. In that moment knew exactly where he wanted to go: he wanted to find the people who had built a computer with such care. Within two years he was working at Apple, first as a contractor, then eventually leading everything design. He spent decades at Apple and built iconic products and one of the the most legendary design teams to have ever existed.
He left Apply six years ago. He started his own practice, called LoveFrom,
At first glance the name makes you wonder… why is there’s a comma after the “m” in LoveFrom, ?
It starts to make sense if you read it as a way to sign a letter… as if his practice was a way to offer a series of gifts to humanity and sign them “with love from us to you”
And their projects are indeed acts of love, from a typeface that took years to create (and is still being adjusted), to re-inventing the button—something everyone else had considered a “solved problem.”
In the interview, he reveals another reason why “love” is in the name. It comes from Freud. But I won’t spoil it. Have a listen.
Shorter Version
To save you time, below is a heavily edited, 14 min version of the original. I’ve selected the most instructive bits for people who are trying to figure out how to design products that matter.
Watching it… you start to feel the urge to do even small tasks well. If you’re interested in the extra-long, extended version, here is a link to the original 59 min conversation.
Below are a few lightly edited quotes from the video. But honestly they sound so much better if you listen to him say them in his deliberate, measured pace. So try reading these quotes aloud,
but carefully,
with purposeful intention,
as if you really mean it.
And that’s not bad advice for anything you do really.
Here are the quotes:
“What we make stands testament to who we are.”
[you could say…] “‘I hit the schedule, we can repent at our leisure, and it's as cheap as we hoped…’ Or you can try and design something that genuinely attempts to move the species on”
“I believe that when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable. And they thought somebody gave a shit about me… And even though it was a small thing. It really did come genuinely from a place of love and of care.”
“..the way Steve expressed it I thought was so beautiful, he said, it's a way of expressing our gratitude to the species.”
“We spend all our time talking about attributes because we can easily measure them. Therefore, this is all that matters, and that's a lie.”
“…if you think about the evolution of an idea, it always starts off as a thought and and then a tentative discussion. …These ethereal thoughts, these fragile concepts, are precarious, and I think a small team of people that really trust each other I think is fundamentally important. If you care… then you might be in danger of actually listening.
“The thing that just kills so many ideas, [is that] people are just desperate to speak and to be heard. What kills most ideas? I think people desperate to express an opinion and it's really, let's be very clear, opinions aren't ideas.
“You can sense carelessness. And so I think it's reasonable to believe that also you sense care.”
“I think it's an obligation and a responsibility to care for each other. Freud said, ‘all there is love and work.’ Work and love. That's all there is. And we spend a lot of time working. And so if we elect to spend our time working, not caring about other people, I think not only do other people suffer, I think we suffer. I think that's a corrosive existence. And so I would see it as, not only a responsibility, but truly a privilege, if we get to practice and express our concern and our care for one another.”
There is much more to unpack around Apple, Jony Ive, Steve Jobs, design, products, MVP vs building something people actually love, Stripe, Patrick’s take on “fast” and more.
You’re getting this newsletter because at some point you signed-up on my Twitter Medium LinkedIn or Insta. Think of me as your creative friend on the internet, who always tries to give you something artful, helpful, and interesting. I’m on a mission to uncover why some people change the world and others just live in it.
Got a Story, Art, or Design Emergency?
Call my 24-Hour Story, Art, and Design Hotline
and talk for free to my AI-Buckhouse Agent
+1 (650) 675-5734
Web calling here for outside the US
Try it! It’s fun.
Such a nice post. Inspiring. Thanks James.