Design isn't just about how something looks. It's not just the chamfered edge of an iPhone or the way a MacBook hinge feels when it resists your thumb just enough before swinging open. To Sir Jony Ive, the man who spent decades as Apple’s Chief Design Officer, the core of the work was always something much more sentimental. He called it love. Specifically, love from Jony Ive was expressed through a fanatical, almost pathological obsession with the things people would never even see.
It sounds cheesy. I know.
But when you look at the trajectory of consumer electronics over the last thirty years, that specific philosophy is what separated a "gadget" from an "object of desire." Most companies build products to meet a spec sheet. They want to hit a price point. Ive, working alongside Steve Jobs, wanted to build things that felt like they were made by people who actually cared about the person on the other end.
The Definition of Care in Mass Production
The concept of love from Jony Ive isn't about romance; it's about civic duty. In various interviews, including his famous talk at the Royal College of Art, Ive has described "care" as a way of showing respect for the user. He famously said that "there is a beauty in the things that no one sees," referring to the internal layout of a computer's circuit board or the polished finish of a screw hidden inside a chassis.
Why bother?
If the consumer never opens the case, why spend millions of dollars on the aesthetics of a motherboard? For Ive, neglecting the hidden parts was a form of laziness. It was a betrayal of the craft. If you truly love the craft, you don't cut corners just because you can get away with it. You treat the invisible parts with the same reverence as the screen. That’s the "love" part. It’s an investment of time and soul into an inanimate object.
The Power of "No"
People think design is about adding features. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about killing your darlings. Ive’s process was famously brutal. He and his team at Design Studio would spend months—sometimes years—perfecting a single radius.
Think about the original iMac.
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Before that, computers were beige boxes meant to be hidden under desks. They were utilitarian. They were cold. Ive’s team introduced translucency and color. They added a handle. Not because you’d carry it around often, but because a handle makes a machine feel approachable. It invites you to touch it. It removes the fear of the technology. That’s a very human way to design. It’s empathetic.
How Love From Jony Ive Changed Our Relationship with Glass and Metal
We spend about five to seven hours a day touching our phones. That’s more physical contact than we have with most of our family members. Ive understood this early on. He spoke often about the "materiality" of objects. He didn't just want a phone to be a tool; he wanted it to feel like a gemstone.
When the iPhone 4 was released, it was a massive departure. It was two slabs of glass held together by a band of stainless steel. At the time, it felt like it came from the future. But the obsession behind it was ancient. It was the same obsession a watchmaker has with a movement.
- The Weight: It had to feel substantial, not flimsy.
- The Sound: Every click of a button was tuned.
- The Finish: The polishing process for the Jet Black iPhone 7 took nine steps of anodization and polishing to achieve a seamless transition between glass and metal.
Critics often called this "over-engineering." They weren't necessarily wrong. From a cold, business-oriented perspective, spending that much effort on a finish that would eventually get scratched is irrational. But from the perspective of love from Jony Ive, it was the only way to do it. If you’re going to ask someone to spend $1,000 on a device, you owe them the best possible version of that device.
The Influence of Dieter Rams
You can't talk about Jony’s philosophy without mentioning Dieter Rams, the legendary Braun designer. Rams' ten principles of "Good Design" were the blueprint. "Good design is honest." "Good design is as little design as possible."
Ive took these principles and added a layer of sensuality. Where Rams was clinical and German, Ive was soulful and British. He wanted things to be "inevitable." That’s a word he used a lot. He felt that if a design was right, it should feel like it couldn't have been any other way. Like it was discovered rather than invented.
The Dark Side of Perfectionism
It wasn't all sunshine and polished aluminum. The pursuit of "love" through design led to some of Apple's most controversial moments. When you are obsessed with the "purity" of an object, you tend to dislike things that "clutter" it. Like ports. Or tactile keyboards.
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The 12-inch MacBook is a prime example.
It was a masterpiece of industrial design. It was impossibly thin. It was a single piece of metal that felt like a folder. But it only had one port. And the keyboard—the infamous Butterfly keyboard—was designed to be as thin as possible to maintain that "inevitable" silhouette.
The result? It broke. A lot.
This is where the philosophy of love from Jony Ive hit a wall. Sometimes, the love for the object superseded the love for the utility. Users loved the way it looked, but they hated the way it typed. It was a rare moment where the design team's vision became disconnected from the practical reality of using a computer for eight hours a day. It reminds us that even the most "loving" design needs to be tempered by the boring, ugly reality of physics and dust.
The Shift to LoveFrom
In 2019, Ive left Apple to start his own firm, ironically named LoveFrom.
The name itself is a tribute to his time with Steve Jobs. Jobs once said that one of the fundamental motivations for making something great is to express your deep gratitude and love for the rest of humanity. You don't know the people you're making it for, and you'll never shake their hands, but by making something with a great deal of care, you are expressing your love for the species.
LoveFrom isn't just a tech firm. They’ve designed everything from a red nose for Comic Relief to a typeface and even a sustainable seal for King Charles III.
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Why This Matters for the Future of Tech
We are currently moving into the era of Spatial Computing and AI. Screens are disappearing. Hardware is becoming more invisible. In this world, the "care" that Ive championed is more important than ever.
If a device is going to sit on your face (like a Vision Pro) or listen to your home (like a HomePod), it cannot feel like a cold, corporate piece of plastic. It has to feel "warm." It has to feel like it was made with intention.
The legacy of love from Jony Ive is the realization that we don't just use tools; we live with them. They are extensions of our hands and our brains. When a designer puts love into a product, the user feels it, even if they can't articulate why. They just know that the "thing" feels right.
Real-World Takeaways for Your Own Work
You don't have to be a world-class industrial designer to apply these principles. Whether you're writing code, building a brand, or even just sending an email, there’s a way to "design with love."
- Focus on the Unseen: Take five extra minutes to clean up the parts of your project that the client might never see. It builds your own integrity.
- Seek Inevitability: If a solution feels "clunky," it probably is. Keep stripping away the noise until the core idea is the only thing left.
- Respect the Material: Whatever medium you're working in—words, pixels, or wood—understand its limits and its strengths. Don't try to make it something it isn't.
- Practice Empathy: Always ask: "How will the person on the other end feel when they touch/read/use this?"
Design isn't a veneer. It’s not something you "do" at the end of a project to make it look pretty. It’s the soul of the work. If you take anything from the career of Jony Ive, let it be the idea that being "good enough" is an insult to the people you're serving.
Care more than is sensible. Over-index on the details. Make it so that when someone holds your work, they can feel the "love" you put into it. It’s a harder way to work, and it’s definitely more expensive, but it’s the only way to make something that actually lasts.
The gadgets of the 90s are in landfills. The products Ive designed? They’re in the Museum of Modern Art. That is the difference between making a product and making an icon. It all starts with the decision to actually give a damn about the hidden screws.