Designers of the future
Yesterday it was revealed that Jony Ive designed a Leica camera for a charity auction that’s expected to fetch up to $750,000. Increasingly, designers are the stars of the tech world. We pick six of the whizzes shaping the way we live
Jony Ive
The son of a silversmith, Jony Ive was born in London and educated at Newcastle Polytechnic where he studied industrial design. His first commission from Apple was in 1992 and he was senior vice president of design by 1997. His first assignment was the iMac and he oversaw all the products that changed everyone’s lives in the noughties.
Tony Fadell
Born in Michigan, USA, Tony Fadell is often called “one of the fathers of the iPod” for his work on the first generation iPod. A computer engineering graduate from the University of Michigan, Tony was eventually promoted to senior vice president of the iPod Division at Apple before leaving to found his own company, Nest Labs, in 2010.
Maaike Evers
Maaike Evers worked on the ground-breaking design for the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. She was hired by Google along with her husband Mike Simonian to work on their Nexus Q media streaming device. In their spare time, the San Franscians also run their own progressive industrial design studio called Mike & Maakie.
Mike Matas
Born in Seattle, Washington, this high-school dropout started working in tech for The Omni Group at the age of 15. He joined Apple at the age of 19 where they named him as co-inventor on patents for designing key parts of the Mac OS X and iPhone OS operating systems. He now lives in San Francisco where he works as a Facebook product designer.
Kate Aronowitz
Kate Aronowitz has hopped her way around some of the world’s greatest internet start ups. She was first talked about as a star on the rise working in user experience and design at eBay before she moved on to be director of design at LinkedIn. Then she joined Facebook where she gave the entire site a makeover with her timeline feature.
Jean-Marc Denis
This technologically skilled Frenchman lives in Toulouse where he started his own company at the age of 18 creating websites and communication software for companies. Denis then went on to lead the design team for a Parisian company called Sparrow who designed email applications for Mac and the iPhone. He now designs Google products.