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Tutorial #1 Wiki Question (2 marks): Review the Tutorial 1 movies, and describe Jonathan Ives and his theory of 'undesign' in relation to his work at Macintosh. (200 words)

Jonathan Ives is an English designer and the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc since 1992. He is the principal designer of the iMac, aluminum and titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

He created a theory of “undesign” in relation to his work at Macintosh which deals with simplicity and ease of use. According to Ives good design is the importance of eliminating the unnecessary parts of a product.

Simplicity factors in by designing a product that does only what it is required to do and nothing more, reducing clutter and keeping the attention on the technology itself. “If it is not indicating something, it shouldn’t be there.”

Ease of use comes from the inspiration by Ives from nature. One example is the 2002 iMac which gets its inspiration from a sunflower, with a base, neck and a display.

All of his designs are created so that his product parts are all interconnected, creating simplicity. Ives achieves this by creating unibody structures. For example the first iMacs have plastic body casings and the MacBook Air have unibody aluminum casings.

Revolutionary designs using Ives theory of “undesign” by him and his small team has helped make Apple what it is today, a leader in industrial design.