Jony Ive on How Product Naming Influences Design Philosophy [Mac Blog]

Just a couple days after a clip of Jony Ive's appearance on BBC's Blue Peter was revealed, journalist Tom Davenport (via CNET) says he's found an insightful portion of the clip that was cut out. In the new segment, Ive talks about how product naming philosophy can affect the design process.

If we're thinking of lunchbox, we'd be really careful about not having the word 'box' already give you  bunch of ideas that could be quite narrow. You think of a box being a square, and like a cube. And so we're quite careful with the words we use, because those can determine the path that you go down.

As mentioned previously, Ive was a fan of Blue Peter while he was growing up and talks about a design he saw on the show that's stuck with him over the years. This is just another look at Ive's design process, which he's started talking about more and more over the years as Apple's profile has risen and as Ive and his team have received more accolades, which includes his knighting last May.


Last October, Ive was promoted to head of the Human Interface team and is playing the Steve Jobs role at the company. Former Apple employee Loren Brichter, who went on to create iOS game Letterpress, had said he was excited about Ive's new role because of how he could possibly apply his design philosophy to iOS.