Top 80 Jonathan Ive Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Simplification is one of the most difficult things to do.”

— Jonathan Ive

2. “Simplicity is really hard.”

— Jonathan Ive

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3. “It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.”

— Jonathan Ive

4. “I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It’s about bringing order to complexity.”

— Jonathan Ive

5. “There’s no learning without trying lots of ideas and failing lots of times.”

— Jonathan Ive

6. “The best ideas start as conversations.”

— Jonathan Ive

7. “Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something thats genuinely better is very hard.”

— Jonathan Ive

8. “The word design is everything and nothing. The design and the product itself are inseparable.”

— Jonathan Ive

9. “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.”

— Jonathan Ive

10. “The design process is about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers.”

— Jonathan Ive

11. “We shouldn’t be afraid to fail – if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.”

— Jonathan Ive

12. “It’s actually a rare and precious thing to discover what it is you love to do, and I encourage you to remain unapologetically consumed by it. Be faithful to your gift and very confident in its value.”

— Jonathan Ive

13. “We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.”

— Jonathan Ive

14. “The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.”

— Jonathan Ive

15. “There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.”

— Jonathan Ive

16. “There’s an applied style of being minimal and simple, and then there’s real simplicity. This looks simple, because it really is.”

— Jonathan Ive

17. “To do something innovative means that you reject reason.”

— Jonathan Ive

18. “A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.”

— Jonathan Ive

19. “The goal of Apple is not to make money but to make really nice products, really great products.”

— Jonathan Ive

20. “A beautiful product that doesn’t work very well is ugly.”

— Jonathan Ive

21. “If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it’s new you are confronting problems and challenges you don’t have references for.”

— Jonathan Ive

22. “It’s very easy to make something that is new. So we are trying to make things that are better.”

— Jonathan Ive

23. “It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build an easier for people to work with.”

— Jonathan Ive

24. “When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.”

— Jonathan Ive

25. “Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great. Competent design is not too much of a stretch. But if you are trying to do something new, you have challenges on so many axes.”

— Jonathan Ive

26. “At the start of the process the idea is just a thought – very fragile and exclusive. When the first physical manifestation is created everything changes. It is no longer exclusive, now it involves a lot of people.”

— Jonathan Ive

27. “What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness.”

— Jonathan Ive

28. “Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural – it’s so hard!”

— Jonathan Ive

29. “The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.”

— Jonathan Ive

30. “The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.”

— Jonathan Ive

31. “Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product.”

— Jonathan Ive

32. “We don’t do focus groups – that is the job of the designer. It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.”

— Jonathan Ive

33. “What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.”

— Jonathan Ive

34. “We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It’s the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.”

— Jonathan Ive

35. “We shouldn’t be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing.”

— Jonathan Ive

36. “You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”

— Jonathan Ive

37. “Perhaps I’d like to design cars, but I don’t think I’d be much good at it.”

— Jonathan Ive

38. “I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.”

— Jonathan Ive

39. “The quest for simplicity has to pervade every part of the process. It really is fundamental.”

— Jonathan Ive

40. “As consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.”

— Jonathan Ive

41. “The memory of how we work will endure beyond the products of our work.”

— Jonathan Ive

42. “I’m always focussed on the actual work, and I think that’s a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.”

— Jonathan Ive

43. “The computer industry is creatively bankrupt.”

— Jonathan Ive

44. “Designing and developing anything of consequence is incredibly challenging.”

— Jonathan Ive

45. “Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products.”

— Jonathan Ive

46. “Our goal is to try to bring a calm and simplicity to what are incredibly complex problems so that you’re not aware really of the solution.”

— Jonathan Ive

47. “The most important thing is that you actually care, that you do something to the very best of your ability.”

— Jonathan Ive

48. “We believe that technology is at its very best; at its most empowering when it disappears.”

— Jonathan Ive

49. “Apple’s Jony Ive describes his “fanatical” approach to design in new interview.”

— Jonathan Ive

50. “I think it’s a wonderful view that care was important – but I think you can make a one-off and not care and you can make a million of something and care. Whether you really care or not is not driven by how many of the products you’re going to make.”

— Jonathan Ive