October 11th marks the 10th anniversary of Jobs’ death. A week later, Jobs’s friend and former Apple design director Jony Ive’s new company LoveFrom’s official website went live to pay tribute to Jobs.
In November 2019, Jony Ive left Apple and co-founded the design company LoveFrom with the same famous industrial designer Marc Newson.
▲ Marc Newson (left) and Jony Ive. (Source: Flashy World)
It is said that at least 4 key former Apple employees have also quit and joined LoveFrom’s strong team. The four employees include Wan Is and Chris Wilson, who have worked hard for Apple’s human-machine interface design for 16 and 12 years, Patch Kessler, who designed Apple products from 2007 to 2017, and Jeff Tiller, who is responsible for the administration of Apple’s design team.
LoveFrom also recruits outstanding talents from different fields, bringing together creative teams of designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, writers, engineers and artists in various professional fields.
▲ The table designed by the two in 2013. (Source: Macg, the same below)
▲ A Christmas installation designed by the two.
Not only the team members have a distinguished background and rich experience, but also the client list is not small. Following Apple as the first important customer of course, LoveFrom has established long-term partnerships with Airbnb and Ferrari holding company Exor.
Back to LoveFrom, the name is a compound word composed of “Love” (Love) and “From” (From). The naming is also closely related to Jobs. In naming, Jobs is a genius-using the fruit he likes to eat as the name of the apple; after leaving Apple in the 1980s, the new company was named NeXT.
After working for Apple for nearly 30 years, Jony Ive also left Apple. This time he named the new company and was also inspired by Jobs. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jony Ive pointed out that LoveFrom came from a staff meeting with Jobs a few years ago, and Jobs gave a touching description of “design motivation.”
(Design) One of the fundamental motivations is that when you do something with love and wholeheartedness, even though you may never meet people who work hard for it, or even shake hands with them, through serious creation, it is expression Grateful to all mankind.
Jony Ive’s new design company, the Apple design spirit created by Jobs and Jony Ive continues. LoveFrom can be said to be the title of the sequel.
LoveFrom website that seems familiar
The LoveFrom website seems to be extremely concise: a flashing cursor appears on a white background. After inputting the 8 letters of LoveFrom, the cursor becomes a dot, and the tail becomes a comma. It rotates, rolls, and bounces until it steadily falls on the right side of LoveFrom.
After tapping the screen, a short text statement slides to appear. In addition, there is no contact information, no team members, only one line of signature in italics.
LoveFrom is a creative collective. We are designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, writers, engineers and artists. You can get to know us through our past work.
We are obsessed with creating and manufacturing traditions, fanatical pursuit of excellence, and insatiable curiosity.
We work with leaders and founders. We work for happiness. We develop our own ideas.
Even so, those who understand Apple’s aesthetics will surely find it familiar when looking at the website. The font name is LoveFrom Serif. Serif is a “serif” category word. Some “small tails” will be added behind the letter lines to make the font more elegant.
▲ Use iPhone on LoveFrom official website. (Source: Wallpaper)
Although it is a new font, LoveFrom Serif is very similar to a certain Apple font: when Apple launched its first computer Macintosh in 1984, it adopted the Apple Garamond corporate font.
▲ Macintosh’s Apple Garamond font. (Source: Flickr/Blake Patterson CC BY 2.0)
This font not only appeared in computer systems, product manuals, packaging design, but also the title font of most marketing activities that year. For example, the “Think different” advertisement uses Apple Garamond.
▲ 蘋果「Think different」廣告文案。（Source：Apple logo Think Different.png:derivative work: Stoopkitty (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons）
Apple Garamond font is a variant of ITC Garamond font, reduced by 20% in width. LoveFrom Serif is more like Apple Garamond before losing weight. Apple Garamond also contributed to the font sites Fonts In Use and Typographica.org founder Stephen Coles presumed to be “Jobs’ favorite font.” Now, Helvetica, which is used by Apple’s system, is only the second choice.
Taking the Apple Garamond font in the style of John Baskerville as a reference, LoveFrom Serif was shaped by the efforts of Italian designer Antonio Cavedoni.
▲ Antonio Cavedoni。（Source：devroye.org）
Antonio is also a former Apple employee. He worked as a type designer from 2010 to 2016. At the end of 2016, he returned to Milan and founded the font studio Fonderia Cavedoni. Open the personal official website Antonio Cavedoni, and LoveFrom is also a bit like, but more Italian style. The red background and the classical text that looks like a stone carving is also a simple paragraph with hyperlinks to the partial text.
Participated in the design of LoveFrom’s official website, in addition to Jony and Antonio, legendary art director Peter Saville and interface designer Chris Wilson. They were all inspired by Apple’s simple aesthetics, and they gave birth to the official website of LoveFrom.
Make Apple look more like Apple’s design godfather
On the tenth anniversary of Jobs’ death, Jony Ive published a letter to Jobs in The Wall Street Journal. Jony Ive mentioned that in the 15 years of working with Jobs, he spent most of his time together: having lunch together and discussing in the design studio together were the happiest time in his life.
After working with Steve Jobs and then serving in these years, Jony Ive created too many great designs for Apple. After graduating from the Department of Industrial Design of Northumbria University, Jony Ive established a personal studio as soon as he graduated. Since Apple is one of the clients, he joined the Apple design department in 1992 by chance.
But it wasn’t until Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 that Jony Ive was able to show off his talents. Major product designs such as Macbook Pro, iMac, MacBook Air, iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad all played an important role.
Of course Jony Ive also has peculiar designs, such as a mouse that cannot be used while charging. Visual marketing expert Laura Olin joked: “As required by law, every article about Jony Ive’s design and contributions must include this (charging mouse) photo.”
Every forthcoming article about Jonny Ive’s design genius and legacy should be required by law to include this photo pic.twitter.com/mAkpmDSBqC
– Laura olin (@lauraolin) June 27, 2019
Here are ten revolutionary products designed by Jony Ive for Apple.
iMac（1998）：iMac is the first project that Jony Ive is fully responsible for. It has changed the original heavy beige design of Apple computers, let Apple computers enter the color era, and hide all external interfaces.
（Source：Flickr/Matthew Pearce CC BY 2.0）
iBook G3 （1999） ：Introducing the transparent case of iMac into other products, the clamshell laptop iBook G3 is typical.
（Source：Flickr/Carl Berkeley CC BY 2.0）
iPod（2001）：Mp3 player with a capacity of 5GB, iPod design desperately subtracted, the final product only has 5 buttons and 1 scroll wheel. The appearance of the iPod caused an uproar in the music player market that year.
(Source: Apple)
iMac G4 （2002） ：The iMac G4, which looked like a desk lamp, was once called “iLamp” (Lamp is a desk lamp), but this design was extremely innovative at the time and became a topical product of the year, attracting a lot of traffic for Apple.
（Source：Unsplash）
MacBook（2006）：Jony Ive, who liked white the most, successfully convinced Jobs, who disliked white very much, that the first white MacBook was born.
（Source：Jared C. Benedict, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons）
iPhone（2007）：iPhone Design was nominated as the best design of the design museum in 2008, and was also listed as the “most outstanding design of the 21st century” by Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief of the well-known magazine “Dezeen”.
（Source：Flickr/Micyaotl Garcia CC BY 2.0）
iPad（2010）：The iPad, like the enlarged version of the iPhone, has a 9.7-inch touch screen and is compatible with most Apple applications. It also represents Apple’s aggressive entry into the tablet market.
（Source：Flickr/FHKE CC BY 2.0）
iOS 7（2013）：After taking over as head of Apple’s hardware and software, Jony Ive reformed the user interface, allowing Apple’s minimalist aesthetics to be implemented on the screens most commonly used by users.
At the iOS 7 press conference, Jony Ive said: “I think concise, clear and efficient design has a deep and lasting beauty. True simplicity not only comes from the absence of clutter and excessive decoration, but also brings a sense of order to complexity.”
(Source: Apple)
Apple Watch（2014）：Jony Ive’s personal experience is inseparable from the launch of Apple Watch.
Jony Ive bought an Omega Speedmaster watch in Hong Kong when he was 25 years old. The Speedmaster was once taken to the moon by an astronaut. This story touched Jony Ive a lot: he also wanted to build an epoch-making watch, and later proposed the Apple Watch plan.
(Source: Apple)
Apple Park（2017）：The Apple Park design can be traced back to 2004. Jony Ive and Jobs took a walk in Hyde Park, London, and came up with an idea-to build a building like Stanford University near Jobs’ hometown, surrounded by green spaces, and there are many things for people to talk to. space.
It is a pity that Apple Park was only completed in 2017, many years after the death of Jobs.
（Source：Unsplash）
From smart devices to large-scale buildings, Jony Ive’s works cover a wide range of fields and will continue to be displayed at LoveFrom. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s 2019 document, Jony Ive registered the word LoveFrom Jony in addition to the LoveFrom trademark.
The list of goods and services provided by the trademark application file LoveFrom includes all the categories you want-cars, drones, beauty products, household appliances, and kitchen appliances. Jony Ive has also explored more extensively in the field of design, creating excellent designs in more fields.
Going back to the “Financial Times” interview, Jony Ive has a very unique view on “what is good design”.
As a designer, I think I am trying to solve extremely complex problems, but to make the solution simple. You should not force people to feel only your effort or something else.
Sometimes you see a product and see the effort behind the designer. I am really proud of all the invisible designs.
For me, the decisive factor is the unusually fanatical curiosity. This is the core and foundation of most creative efforts. But without tools and hardware, curiosity often has no chance to play.
Although Jony Ive’s Apple career is over, just like the small comma after LoveFrom, his work for Apple and other companies continues without a full stop. Let’s wait and see new works by Jony Ive and LoveFrom.
(This article is authorized to reprint by Ai Faner; the source of the first image: Dazhi Image)