When Apple unveiled its space-age iMac this spring, it caused a huge sensation. Not only is iMac turbo-charged and priced for the consumer market, it looks unlike any other machine out there--computer or otherwise. Remarkable by any measure, the iMac demonstrates the incredible "Think different" creativity of Apple's in-house industrial design group, led by British-born designer Jonathan Ive. Who is Ive and how does he view the world? This interview provides a glimpse of Apple's industrial design team leader.

When did you join Apple?
Ive: I started working with Apple as a consultant in the early 1990s while I was a partner in a design firm called Tangerine in London. At the end of '92, I moved to San Francisco and started working in-house for Apple.

How did Apple come to consult with a firm based in the U.K.?
Ive: Apple was doing a world tour to look at international consultancies. I'm not sure how many consultants they looked at, but I think the one thing we had that appealed to them was a naiveté. We hadn't done a lot of high-technology products, but were doing a lot of work with TVs, VCRs, microwave ovens, and high-volume consumer products. Apple was the first computer product we worked on.

At Tangerine, I understand you were designing basins and bathtubs. Are their design considerations different from those of computers?
Ive: Very different. A washbasin has a singular use, and its form constitutes almost the entirety of the product. A computer's function is so enormously broad. It can go from being a writing machine to an incredible multimedia tool to a drawing machine to a communications device. And it is still just one object. The way each person uses a computer can be very different. That makes the design possibilities intriguing.

How can design facilitate an understanding of the computer?
Ive: I see design as playing an important role in forging a connection between Apple's spectacular technology and the individual. Very often design is the most immediate, the most explicit way of defining what these products become in people's minds. What is it? What does it do? How am I going to use it? Where am I going to use it? How much is it going to cost? The intellectual challenge of addressing these questions through design is totally seductive.

There's a widespread perception that computers in general have taken on a generic appearance, i.e., the ubiquitous beige box. Why do you think this has been the case?
Ive: I don't think the reasons stem from the experience of the designers designing those products that way. I think it is driven by an industry that has defined its agenda and what it believes the purchasing criteria should be. That, therefore, defines the priorities for the designer. It is an industry that has become incredibly conservative from a design perspective. It is an industry where there is an obsession about product attributes that you can measure empirically. How fast is it? How big is the hard drive? How fast is the CD? That is a very comfortable space to compete in because you can say 8 is better than 6. But it's also very inhuman and very cold. Because of the industry's obsession with absolutes, there has been a tendency to ignore product attributes that are difficult to measure or talk about. In that sense, the industry has missed out on the more emotive, less tangible product attributes. But to me, that is why I bought an Apple computer in the first place. That is why I came to work for Apple. It's because I've always sensed that Apple had a desire to do more than the bare minimum. It wasn't just going to do what was functionally and empirically necessary. In the early early stuff, I got a sense that care was taken even on details, hard and soft, that people may never discover.

You sensed this when you were an Apple customer and not yet working for the company?
Ive: Absolutely. I still remember my first experience using a Macintosh and falling in love with it. It was a very religious experience in terms of understanding that even I could figure out how to use this tool and then understanding what opportunities it offered, what I could do with it. I think that is one of the reasons I moved halfway around the world. I never thought I would work corporately. I always assumed that I would consult because I liked the diversity of work. Apple was probably the one company where I felt the heritage was so precious. I felt it was a special company that cared about those product attributes that very often don't get talked about.

Could you talk a bit about your industrial design team?
Ive: We are a small group of people recruited from around the world who work together very closely. It is a thrill to be part of a team that has grown and learned together as we have produced our most recent work.

Undoubtedly the most radical design produced by any computer company in recent years is the iMac. How did it come about?
Ive: Right from the beginning, this was very much driven by Steve Jobs. Steve had a clear sense of what the product should be at all different levels--in terms of its functional capabilities, price, market, and what it needed to be as a designed object.

The radical form of the iMac must have provided your team with all kinds of design headaches.
Ive: Producing it has been incredibly difficult, one of the most challenging programs I have been involved with. When you are doing something that is so radically new, you can't work in functional groups. The design team worked closely with the engineering team because for one thing, the iMac footprint is very, very small. You have to integrate and miniaturize, and when you do that you have thermal considerations. You have to think about noise and fans. The iMac is truly a small, cool, quiet product. And it is really frightfully fast.

What kind of design problems did the translucent box present?
Ive: Everything about the iMac is so incredibly different. Every minute detail was considered, right down to the product labels, for which we used a new printing process that has never been used on product labels before. The labels are three-dimensional and appear to move. Because the iMac is translucent, we even had to design the shape of the circuit board. The translucent resin itself presented a problem because of the high volume of products we needed to produce. We had to make sure that the color and level of translucency were exactly the same in the first computer and every one thereafter. This led us to finding a partner who does a lot of work in the candy industry, because a lot of candies are translucent. These guys have so much experience in how you control the compounding and a great understanding of the science of color control. The mouse is another example where, because of the translucent material, we ended up designing the insides because they were part of the outside appearance. The mouse ball has two colors, so when you move the mouse around, you can see the colors changing. The issues we faced were really so fundamentally different that we had to discover new processes and new attitudes for getting them done. Consequently, we felt incredibly vulnerable.

In departing so boldly from traditional design, Apple really managed to differentiate the product. Was that the primary goal?
Ive: I think a lot of people see design primarily as a means to differentiate their product competitively. I really detest that. That is just a corporate agenda, not a customer or people agenda. It is important to understand that our goal wasn't just to differentiate our product, but to create products that people would love in the future. Differentiation was a consequence of our goal.

Apple has long enjoyed a reputation for looking beyond traditional solutions, but what about the risk?
Ive: In a company that was born to innovate, the risk is in not innovating. The real risk is to think it is safe to play it safe. Steve has a clear vision of what it is going to take to get back to the company's root, what it would take to get at the essence of Apple, what it takes to structure the company to be something that can design and make new things. I think that is why customers who have been disenchanted with Apple in recent years have remained loyal. It's because of the relationship that they had with the early Apple.

The Mac has been the platform of choice for the creative community. In designing for creatives, do you find there is greater freedom to think different?
Ive: I am inspired by how tenacious our customers are. One distinction of the creative community is that they live in the future, they live in territory that hasn't been charted. These are people who can appreciate the company's sense of mission. I find it intriguing that our two largest market groups are education and the creative community. Those are the most spectacular markets to work for.

Delphine Hirasuna is the editor of this issue of Apple Media Arts.