ANNOUNCER: Please welcome back Stripe’s cofounder and CEO Patrick Collison. 

PATRICK COLLISON: All right, good afternoon folks. I really hope you enjoyed the product keynote this morning. We’re extremely excited to unveil all of that for you. I hope you’ve enjoyed the other talks and sessions over the course of the day. 

I’m very excited about this interview. There are few people in the Valley who need—or in the technology industry more broadly—who need less of an introduction than Jony. It struck me as I was about to walk on here that he barely even needs a surname. Please welcome to the stage, Sir Jony Ive. All right. So, well, thank you for joining us. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I really would love to say that I am unspeakably grateful and honored to be here. Spending any time with Patrick is a big deal, so thank you. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Well, I want to start in the obvious place. Just, I mean, you didn’t—I don’t know if you got to kind of walk the floor and everything, but you can see a little bit here, and you had the monitor backstage and so forth. What do you think of the design? 

[Laughter]

SIR JONY IVE KBE: It’s lovely, isn’t it? Do you know, I’ve not been here—I haven’t been here for a long time. I have some very strong and vivid memories of being here. But no, the design’s lovely. 

PATRICK COLLISON: The first event I ever came to in San Francisco was one that you designed, you were the auteur behind. It was the WWDC in—I have to go back and check. I think it was ’05, maybe it was ’06. 

But that was the first event I came to in San Francisco, and it was, I want to say, it was here in this room at Moscone, but actually John got to be in here, but I was relegated to the overflow room. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: [Laughs] Which was not my fault. 

PATRICK COLLISON: All right. Well speaking of that, you came to Silicon Valley in 1992, is that right? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: That’s right. 

PATRICK COLLISON: So you’re still very young, but that was a couple of years ago—a couple of decades ago. How has Silicon Valley—so Alan Kay says that the software industry and the computing industry is a pop culture, in the sense that we are ahistorical and we don’t understand the ideas and the antecedents, and the things that came before us. And that’s Alan Kay’s view. I don’t know if it’s right, but I thought it was an interesting idea, and certainly it’s the case that if you ask people, I don’t know, to… 

In many industries, the greats and the creators, and so forth, are these kind of big hallowed names, but if you ask people who invented the internet, a lot of people in the technology industry don’t have a clear sense of that history. I’ve always found that kind of phenomenon interesting. But since you’ve now got to observe Silicon Valley for 33 years, how has it changed? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well, I think when I was at art school, I—so I studied design in England. I was born in London and studied up in the Northeast. And I remember discovering the Mac in my final year, sadly. I wish it had been earlier. But I came to realize something that I should have realized earlier, but what I realized was that what we make stands testament to who we are. And what we make describes our values, it describes our preoccupations. It describes beautifully, succinctly our preoccupation. And this struck me so powerfully when I saw the Mac, and I got a very specific sense—

PATRICK COLLISON: [Crosstalk] because it was a kind of bicycle for the mind, that aspect of it, or something else? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: It was every part—I got a very clear sense of a group clearly of original thinkers with clear values completely, I think, obsessed with people and culture. You know, you can look at something, and it can tell you, “I was designed to meet a price point at a certain time. So I hit the schedule, we can repent at our leisure, and it’s as cheap as we hoped.” Or you can try and design something that genuinely attempts to move the species on. 

And I had a very clear sense of the latter. That this was created by this renegade group in California, and so powerful—I mean, I studied industrial design. I didn’t study technology. But I was so moved by the clear values and the resolve and the courage that I think enabled the embodiment of those values, that I wanted to meet these people. I wanted to come out. And so after college in ’89, I first came out. I had to return—this is probably way too much information. 

PATRICK COLLISON: You’re among—

SIR JONY IVE KBE: A couple of friends. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Exactly. This is a small, intimate fireside chat. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well, the interesting thing was that I had a job commitment—I was sponsored through college. And so I had to go back to work in design in London. And there was a strange liberty, I think, that afforded me. I was impossibly shy, and I think if I’d been traveling out to meet people with the goal of getting a job, I would have found that so anxious making—I don’t think I would have dared to meet people. And so because I had no agenda—I think also, I think people were probably happier to meet me because they didn’t think I wanted anything. 

And so to dare to get close to answering your question, what I saw in ’89 and ’92, when I finally moved out, Apple—I worked, I consulted for Apple for a couple of years, and then they persuaded me to move to San Francisco; to move to Apple here. What I saw, I think, or what I felt, was a sort of an innocent euphoria, I think, of like-minded people driven by values, clearly in service of humanity, gathering together in some small groups, in some huge groups. But I do believe there was a very strong sense of purpose, and that purpose was, we are here to serve the species. 

PATRICK COLLISON: And was that at Apple in ’92, or in the technology industry in ’92, or in the Bay Area ’92? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: That’s a great question. I think honestly, Patrick, it was everywhere. And even though there were competitors, even though—I did feel that there was an underlying sense of our place as servants, and of principled service. And what’s changed? Well, I don’t think that’s the case entirely. I think there are agendas that are about, well, there are corporate agendas, I think—and this will sound a little harsh, but it is—driven by money and power. 

And I think if—you know how you tend to get—you end up somewhere by sort of increments. I think if you were to starkly contrast today with ’92, I think that would be a reasonable assessment. 

PATRICK COLLISON: And for anybody creating software, creating a product, creating a company, what’s the center, or what’s the North Star, that you perceive as having gotten askew today, or the thing that people should hold firm to in order to avoid some of these failure modes? Is it what you just mentioned, having a clear sense of purpose? Is it sort of having a kind of servant orientation? How would you think? What’s at the heart of it? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I think there need to be foundational values, and an understanding of our place in all of this. And having a clear sense of the goal, which is to enable and inspire people. I mean, Patrick and I were talking just a while ago about being toolmakers, and I’m very clear and very proud that that’s my occupation, and that’s my practice. I love trying to move things forward, which means innovating. I have a real issue with—I think people confuse innovation with being different, or breaking stuff. 

I have no interest in breaking stuff for the sake of breaking stuff. I don’t think breaking stuff and moving on quickly leaves us—well, it leaves us surrounded by carnage. I’m interested if things get broken as a consequence of actually creating something better. But I think one of the things that is, I think, part of the human condition is that we assume that progress and innovation is sort of inevitable—and you know that it’s not. 

You know that you have to have, you know, this underlying conviction, which is fuel, and then we need an idea and a vision. And then the resolve to make that vision something that is real, that is not just for us, but that we can share broadly.

PATRICK COLLISON: You once used a phrase with me, “Sincerely elevate the species.” 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yeah. I think that I remember many times, and fortunately, I’m not talking in the past tense, but I do remember particular Sunday afternoons working—actually I remember working on some absurd details within—in terms of packaging. And in such a triv—I mean this, this compared to what you guys do, this will seem so trivial, but I had such a clear awareness that in designing a certain solution—for example, how we managed a cable that’s in a box—that designing that, I knew that millions of people would engage with this little tab, and I can either make the cable an easy thing to unwrap. Sorry. That is such a trivial example, isn’t it? 

PATRICK COLLISON: But clearly you think that, I mean, you can describe the purpose of that in seconds saved, that it shaves five seconds off the unwrapping of every cable and multiply it across hundreds of millions—but I get the sense from you that’s not why you do it. It’s not this trivial utilitarian multiplication and calculation. There’s something spiritual in it for you. What’s the spiritual thing? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I think the spiritual thing is that, I believe that when somebody unwrapped that box and took out that cable, and they thought, “Somebody gave a shit about me,” I think that’s a spiritual thing. 

[Applause]

And I think it’s a way… And I know I’m in good company here. I know that when you—you know, what used to depress me was this sense that solving a functional imperative, then we’re done. But of course that’s not enough. 

That’s not the characteristic of an evolved society, of an evolved species. And so that Sunday afternoon, when I really should have been out with my boys, and I’m worrying about this, I did feel a connection and an excitement that somebody was going to experience something that they don’t even know exists yet. And even though it was a small thing, it really did come genuinely from a place of love and of care. And Steve spoke about this. 

I mean, he spoke about it way more eloquently than I can. But he talked about when you make something with love and with care, even though the people that you’ve made it for, you don’t know their story. They don’t know your story. You’ll never even shake their hands. But when they use the product that you’ve made, it’s a way. And the way Steve expressed it, I thought, was so beautiful. He said it’s a way of expressing our gratitude to the species, and I thought that was such an incredibly thoughtful and beautiful and authentic declaration. 

PATRICK COLLISON: So when people talk about your design that occurred in your time in Apple, they often refer to minimalism, simplicity, the clarity and function, things like this. And that’s all certainly true, but part of what’s very striking to me is how much it seems to have some kind of sense of humor, or joy, woven into it. Like there’s the iMac, like the Pixar lamp. There’s the lozenge iMacs in their technicolor. There were even iPod Socks. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: [Laughs]

PATRICK COLLISON: What’s the role of joy in design? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well, I think that’s such a good question, because I think one of the mistakes that people make is that they think: simple products. You know, simplicity is about removing clutter, and to me, that means you just would end up with an uncluttered product—

PATRICK COLLISON: But a kind of desiccated, soulless product. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yeah. Actually, that’s a beautiful description—a desiccated, soulless product. I think that’s what a lot of minimalism ends up being, or modernism ends up manifesting as. My goal and our goal collectively has been to bring order to chaos, to try and—but the simplicity to me is trying to succinctly express the essence of something, and its purpose, and its role in our life. I actually think that something that I feel conscious of, is that I think generally in the Valley, and generally in our shared—in our industry—I think joy and humor has been missing. 

And that’s something that sort of weighed on me a bit, and, you know, the products that we’re all developing, they’re complicated, aren’t they? And sometimes joy gets confused with being trivial, but I think, I always go back—I don’t know about you, but I always go back to being very clear that my state of mind and how I am in my practice ultimately is going to be embodied in the work. 

And so if I’m consumed with anxiety, that’s how the work will end up. And so I think to be hopeful and optimistic and joyful in our practice, and be that way in how we relate to each other and our colleagues, I actually think that’s how the products will end up. 

PATRICK COLLISON: There’s a wonderful talk by a guy called Daniel Cook about how to build a princess-saving enterprise application. But he deconstructs Super Mario, and obviously, the core purpose is to save the princess, and approaches it from a standard enterprise application design standpoint, and puts together some examples of how one might go about it. 

And he impugns this approach, and kind of critiques it because he says that this kind of design fails to recognize that the user is a person—the person wants to learn, the person can change, the software has an effect on the person, and you have to take that very seriously. And the words you’re using—enable, inspire, love, care, gratitude, joy—to me, they seem to come from a conception of the person as somebody who’s living and changing, and the software, in fact, has an effect on them. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: So something Patrick and I talked about in the past is—and this is something I’d love to try and describe, and you’ll have to help me. Because I think it’s really important, and it’s something that I realize and it took me many years at Apple to realize this, but it’s an effect that I believe occurs when you’re in larger groups of people involved in the common cause of developing a product. 

I think one of the things that happens is, you know, generally we grow up wanting to be able to relate to people and wanting to be sociable. We find ourselves in a work environment with hopefully a diverse range of people. And one of the things that’s interesting is, if we are developing products together, there is this—I noticed this, and it used to infuriate me before I came to try to have a slightly more generous interpretation of why this happens, but the people generally want to talk about product attributes that you can measure easily with a number. 

So if you guys think about it, and you think about what would dominate the conversations that you would have, you will end up talking about schedule, cost, speed, weight. Anything where you can generally agree that six is a bigger number than two. And I understand why, but the problem is much of what—much of my contribution, and the contribution of designers and other creatives—you can’t measure easily with a number. 

Or it gets even more demeaning. It can be just, “Well, that’s your opinion.” Well, that’s like telling your heart surgeon, “Well, that’s your opinion,” and you having a go yourself. And so what I came to realize, and I think this is—I think the more generous interpretation I had was, we do that because we want to try to relate to each other. We do that because we want to be inclusive. But then, this is the dangerous thing that happens, and I would encourage—I desperately hope this doesn’t sound arrogant—but I would really encourage you to think about this because I’ve been so struck by how important this is. 

The insidious lie follows, which is, we spend all our time talking about attributes because we can easily measure them—therefore, this is all that matters—and that’s a lie. It’s important, but it’s a partial truth. And all of the stuff that I think designers and other creatives can contribute to an experience or to a product that can make it delightful to use and joyful to use, as well as more productive—if it’s delightful and joyful, things tend to be used more—are equally important. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Nothing you say sounds arrogant, because when you have a beautiful British accent, then you can get away with anything. 

[Laughter]

PATRICK COLLISON: So we’re speaking about the import and the impact of design, but if we shift a little bit to the practice, is there a trade-off between speed of execution and ensuing quality? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Sometimes. 

PATRICK COLLISON: I was hoping you’d say no. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: [Laughs] I absolutely know there are fabulous examples where I would reframe the question as it being about motivation. So I think what tends to happen is, when we’re put in this situation of having to choose, I would get belligerent and say, “No, we don’t have to choose. We can do both.” It’s very hard—I mean, I know you guys have heard this lots, but it’s hard to do quality and speed and cost and other things. But I think there is a beauty to working efficiently, and I think we can say that’s speed. 

I know we both pay a great deal of attention to the words that we use because they affect the way we think, and the words that we use to frame a problem are some of the most important. And so I would sort of frame the issue of, how can we work wonderfully efficiently to create something with breathtaking quality. 

PATRICK COLLISON: As organizations grow, there’s another kind of tension where, maybe for various people here in the audience, certainly this is something I’ve experienced—in the earliest days, it’s just you. And then there’s maybe a couple of other people, but you can kind of stay abreast of everything that’s happening, and you feel like you have the opportunity, at least, to exercise your taste or judgment or opinion in whatever the issue might be. 

And then perhaps things continue to scale, and at some point it’s far beyond the—it becomes far beyond the scale and scope of any single human. And then there’s this discontinuity where there are things that happen that I never saw—I never had the chance and opportunity to weigh in on. I don’t know how I feel about it. I wouldn’t have done that thing over there. 

I mean, Apple was not a small company when you were there, certainly not in the later years. How do you deal with this? And I think it’s both the scale and scope, but also, doesn’t it feel intrinsically unreasonable to simply say that this thing here doesn’t accord with my taste? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I think it’s very reasonable to say that. 

[Laughter]

SIR JONY IVE KBE: It’s very, very hard isn’t it. I think what I have—I do believe that we go through chapters or seasons, and the painful part is the conclusion of one and the beginning of the next, where we have to adjust and we change our approach. I think the one thing, obviously, it will not work to assume how we started is how we’re going to finish. 

And so I think it is very clear that we are in a constant state of flux. And it’s trying to figure out, I believe, what is, what I’m not going to compromise. 

And I think that’s the very clear focus on your principles and your values and your motivations. I think the alarm bells always go off for me when I think, “Why did I do that? Has a motivation shifted?” And that’s when I’ve really been upset with myself and disappointed with myself, and reset. But I do think if our motivations and values remain the same, we will find ways to be the control freaks we were born to be. Which, of course, I mean—or we can say care as much as we… but let’s be honest. 

PATRICK COLLISON: For a design team that you’re leading or participating in, what are the rituals? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well one of the—I think that there’s nothing more important to me than the creative team and declaring that, and being clear about this is my contribution, and therefore I need to to be part of an extraordinary team, but that’s just, that’s the price of admission, isn’t it. So you can have the people, but practice—our process, our practice, the protocols, are so important. Over many years, over—I mean I’ve been doing this and leading small, creative teams for, I mean, over 30 years. These are some of the things that I’ve found important. 

If you’re dealing, as I was describing earlier, with concepts that you can’t measure with numbers, if you’re dealing with ideas that always—if you think about the evolution of an idea, it always starts off as a thought, and then a tentative discussion. One of the things I realize is just how these ethereal thoughts, these fragile concepts, are precarious. And I think a small team of people that really trust each other, I think, is fundamentally important. 

Trust and love each other, who care about each other. If you care about it, then you might be in danger of actually listening. The thing that just kills so many ideas, and I’ve worked in places where this happens, but people are just desperate to speak and to be heard. And there’s nothing like… You know what kills most ideas, I think, are people desperate to express an opinion. And let’s be very clear, opinions aren’t ideas. I was going to say something really rude then, but I won’t. But I think—

PATRICK COLLISON: You can say it, and we can cut it from the video. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: [Laughs] But to be quiet, and to listen. And one of the things that terrifies me, I know that I’ve missed really amazing ideas that came from a quiet place, from a quiet person, and that really scares me—because I don’t know what I’ve missed. And so talking about the rituals, I think doing things that mean our relationship is authentic and deep. 

You know, one of the things that I discovered that I think is really important, we tried a lot of things at Apple and most of the things that I tried didn’t work out, but a few things I was excited about and grew, I think, to be very powerful. I think, one, as a practice, it’s very good to make things for each other. I think for that to become part of your, you know, daily way of connecting to your team, to think about what you can make for each other, that’s just really—it puts you in a lovely place. 

It makes you more worried about them than you, it makes you vulnerable, and it makes them grateful. And that’s a lot, isn’t it? I mean, those things, just think about what I said. That starts to define quite a lovely culture. And then connected to that, something I was really struck by— 

PATRICK COLLISON: Paul Graham says, make things people want, and Jony Ive says, make things for each other. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yes. I mean, that’s what we do, isn’t it? I mean, all we’re doing is at a very personal level practicing what we’re doing at our professional level. All of us here, I guess almost every single person here, we’re about making something for other people. And so perhaps, I don’t know quite what— 

PATRICK COLLISON: Well, “make things people want,” I feel, is sort of a business strategy—whereas it sounds like what you’re saying is, “make things for each other,” is a team strategy. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well as it—so, for example, one of the things I thought was great was that, you know, every Friday morning I asked that one person on the design team would make breakfast for the whole team, and we took it in turns. And we—

PATRICK COLLISON: Yeah. So, “make things for each other,” I’m imagining, you know, prototype iPhones—but no, it can also be bacon, bacon and eggs.

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I’m talking cornflakes and milk. I mean—

[Laughter]

SIR JONY IVE KBE: —I mean, we saw dizzy heights of some of the food. And some of it was so shocking, but it all came from the same place in terms of motivation. And something that was connected that I was surprised at how powerful it was, excuse me, was we would host—we would take it in turns to have the design team come to our homes, and we would spend the day working in our home. And this is something I probably thought way too much about, but that it was in a very, very powerful way, of one, doing or encouraging us in our practice to do good work, and in building the team. 

And I think there’s an interesting, first of all, there’s an interesting dynamic in terms of how we regard each other. You know, the host—and this is a bit like when we make something for one another—the host is slightly anxious and concerned about the potential judgment of their soft furnishings. And you know what it’s like when you have somebody come to your house—there is a self-consciousness, and, well, certainly, you know, an awkwardness I feel, and then anxiety—and I don’t think that’s unhealthy always. 

And then the guests who you are hosting are, you know, they’re on better behavior than if they were all just trundling into a conference room. And then you’ve got the context. If you’re designing for people, I mean, who here would actually want to spend time in a conference room? I can’t think of a more soulless and depressing place. I mean, I always think—it’s funny. Think about the relationship between the chair you’ve sat on and how you feel. 

Like, none of you would sit watching the TV on these chairs. I mean, you wouldn’t choose to sit on this chair unless it was to listen to John and Patrick.

PATRICK COLLISON: I’m not sure that we’re the attraction in this particular event. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: But I think there is an important point, which is, if you’re designing for people and you’re in someone’s living room, sat on their sofa or sat on their floor, and your sketchbook is on their coffee table—of course you think differently, don’t you? Of course your preoccupation, where your mind wanders, is so different than if you sat in a typical corporate conference room. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Is beauty subjective or objective? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: [Crosstalk]—

PATRICK COLLISON: I figure we now got to get to the easier questions. 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yeah. I think it’s, I mean, I’ll be interested in your take on that. I think it’s a bit of both. I think utility and function, if something doesn’t work, it’s ugly. I always get frustrated when people try to, you know, they set up a false opposition between utility and aesthetics. And when I’ve designed something, or been involved in the design of something that doesn’t work, I don’t care what it looks like—it’s ugly. 

I think the tougher thing is when we get on to the issues of taste, and I think design has always been a difficult thing in that, because it’s very easy for everybody to have an opinion—everybody does—it just doesn’t mean every opinion has the same weight. And I think that’s a relatively robust statement, in that if you’ve studied and studied and studied design. Although, I know people who’ve studied and studied design with terrible taste. 

[Laughter]

SIR JONY IVE KBE: So I don’t know. Yeah, it’s a good—

PATRICK COLLISON: OK, so Christopher Alexander said that between two objects or two choices or two paths, the one that feels more humane is the one that you should choose. But that this kind of sense of humanity in the object is a better guide than beauty, which perhaps pulls you into more subjective territory. Does that resonate at all, or do you think that sounds crazy? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: No, I think that’s absolutely the case. And I think the people—I think generally most companies patronize consumers. I think users are, I actually do believe, very sophisticated. And I think there’s issues of beauty, of humanity. And this goes back to the first thing I was saying about my sense of Steve and the Apple team, you know, looking at the first Mac—that you sense care. And I’ve tried to talk about this before, I really do believe—and I wish that I had empirical evidence, but I do believe that we have this ability to sense care. 

It’s easy in a service because you confront care, because you confront the person. When it’s vicarious, when it’s via an object, when it’s via a piece of software, it’s more complex. But I think you might understand it more if I said, you sense carelessness. You know carelessness. And so, I think it’s reasonable to believe that you also know care, and you sense care. And we worked very hard, and I felt passionately about finishing the inside of products. And when I mean finishing, I mean, we designed everything, and we cared about everything. 

And you, I mean, I’m sure many of you have heard the bit about a great cabinetmaker finishing the back of a drawer, even though it’s unlikely it will be seen. But in the same way, I think a mark of how evolved we are as people, it’s what we do when no one sees. And I think that’s indicative; it’s a powerful marker of who we truly are. And I would be haunted by, if all we did was the outside, I would have this nagging feeling in my tummy that we were just being superficial. 

PATRICK COLLISON: So you mentioned modernism a little bit earlier in this discussion, and there’s sort of a puzzle that I’ve been trying to reconcile around modernism that maybe you can sort of help me with, where so much early modernism was kind of deliberately ugly. Like you have the Duchamp Fountain, and I mean, even Picasso’s work, I mean, it’s dissonant, right? It’s certainly not classically beautiful. 

And then you sort of had this political valence to the program, and Gropius said that Bauhaus was a, he said in the manifesto, it was a socialist movement. And you were originally trained in Bauhaus design, right? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yes.

PATRICK COLLISON: Yeah. So there’s this kind of—and you have Schoenberg and the atonality, and all this stuff, right? But then the Apple products, and the products that you designed, are very beautiful. And Apple is not a socialist undertaking. And so what’s going on here? And so the particular thing I’m trying to figure out is, was there a strain to modernism where it was intentionally trying to be dissonant, or even ugly, or to shock people or something, and how maybe now with some remove—you’re no longer at Apple—how do you view that whole thing, and what’s your take on modernism? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: That’s a great question. I think what tends to happen is very often, at the beginning of a movement, whether it’s a design or an art movement, there is that incredible, energetic—I mean, in a way, by definition, if it marks the beginning of a movement, there is energy. And I think, often, beauty—it evolves. Beauty takes time. And very often at the beginning of an energy, it’s an explosion, and there’s not time. 

I would dare presume that, certainly if we’re talking about fine art, that people would say they have no time, they don’t want to be distracted by concepts of beauty. And so I think for sure, you know, if a lot of modernism was driven by the heady excitement about new materials, your obsession was the manipulation of that new material. 

One thing, I mean, I’m not sure how many of you guys know about Bauhaus, but this was a movement in Germany. But what you will know, you’ll be—and it ranged from fine art to furniture to architecture. Patrick mentioned Walter Gropius, and an incredible, incredible movement. But what you would probably be most familiar with would be chairs, like the Breuer chair or the Wassily chair. Which if you’re trying to think of like polished-steel, chrome-plated tubes that are bent—you know, those sort of bent chairs—so what’s interesting there is these guys had just figured, they were so excited because they’d figured out how to bend tubes. And so what did they do? 

They bent tubes, and that’s why all the furniture is bent-tube furniture. So I think that, I mean, that’s what I would have done. Because when you bend tubes, they tend to kink. And so they’d figured out this way of putting springs into tubes. And so, of course, you’d run away, and you’d bend as many tubes as you could get your hands on. Beauty probably wasn’t at the front of your mind. Tubes. 

PATRICK COLLISON: So when I look at your work, and we haven’t yet talked about LoveFrom—although maybe if you want to give people a short summary of how you think about that, that might be helpful—but when I look at your more recent work and some of what LoveFrom has done, I see it as Jony’s ornament era, where Apple was so stripped down and bare and reduced to the essence. And now, I see that—I mean, maybe this is a misapprehension, but now you’re more curious to try other styles. Is that true? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I think that’s a lovely observation, yeah. So it’s nearly 6 years ago that I left Apple, and my goal was to build the most extraordinary creative team I possibly could, and we’re about 50, 60 people. Many of the designers I’ve worked with for decades and decades, which means I’ve worked with them at Apple—but it’s a very diverse team. So it’s a team of industrial designers, graphic designers, user interface designers, architects, typographers, musicians, sound designers. 

And I think perhaps what you’re referring to is, that just our usefulness, or the people that we’re collaborating with, that’s a very diverse group now. Where before, we were very focused and we had a clear criteria for what we were doing, but if you’re working for the king on his coronation identity, that of course would demand a very different approach than the one we would have taken if we were designing instructional products for how to use an iMac. So I think that’s—

PATRICK COLLISON: And follow the context.

SIR JONY IVE KBE: —I think that’s what you’re seeing. Yeah. I think it’s really what the problem is that we’re addressing. 

PATRICK COLLISON: So you’re talking a lot about the purpose of design and the effect the design has on the recipient, on the user, on the consumer, whatever the case is. There’s widespread concern and speculation about the effects of smartphones, slash, the internet. It doesn’t necessarily, you know, correspond just with the smartphone, but on some of these products, on attention spans, and whether it has some adverse effect on kids or teens, or who knows, maybe all of us. Maybe the adults as well. 

You know, there’s questions over with AI, whether it changes how education works, and cheating, and school. Just all of these technologies that we create have this potential double-sidedness to them. And so I guess as somebody who clearly takes seriously, and thinks seriously, about the full effects, how do you think about the possible harms? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Yeah, I think when—and this is, there’s probably not anything that I can be more preoccupied or bothered by than what you’ve just described. I think when you’re innovating, of course, there will be unintended consequences. You hope that the majority will be pleasant surprises. Certain products that I’ve been very, very involved with, I think there were some unintended consequences that were far from pleasant. 

My issue is that even though there was no intention, I think there still needs to be responsibility. And that weighs on me, as you know, heavily. What I think has been particularly difficult is, traditionally when you look at innovation—I mean there’s nothing new with—I mean, one thing. Patrick and I were, months ago, talking about some of the architecture that was associated with the Industrial Revolution in England. 

And so there are examples we could talk about this—

PATRICK COLLISON: Google “Victorian pumping stations.” 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: So you imagine that sewage used to flow freely down the streets. And then suddenly—and this is for all of humanity’s existence, if there were streets—and then suddenly sewage was silently and predictably and consistently kept from streets. And the machines that achieved this were housed in cathedral-like structures. I mean, it’s amazing. 

And there is just incredible precedent for these huge—when you have a big technological change, it impacts society. And the Industrial Revolution is, my goodness, a profound, profoundly significant occurrence in the sort of middle of the 1800s, certainly in the UK. The thing that I think is so challenging is there was time for society to stop and consider what was happening. And there was time for structure, and whether that was sort of infrastructure, whether it was sort of social frameworks, to try and assimilate and deal with these shifts. 

And I think what’s been very challenging is, we are moving so fast. The discussion comes far too late. And there can’t be—I mean, unless there is—I mean, the thing that I find encouraging about AI is it’s very rare for there to be a discussion about AI, and there not to be the appropriate concerns about safety. What I was far more worried about was for years and years and years, there would be discussions about social media, and I was extremely concerned about social media, and there was no discussion whatsoever. 

And it’s the insidious challenge of a problem that’s not even talked about, I think is always more concerning. And so yeah, I think the rate of change is dangerous. I think even if you’re innocent in your intention, I think if you’re involved in something that has poor consequences, you need to own it. And that ownership personally has driven a lot of what I’ve been working on that I can’t talk about at the moment, but look forward to being able to talk about at some point in the future. 

PATRICK COLLISON: I wasn’t going to bring it up, but you mentioned the Victorian pumping station. So which place and time in history had the best design? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Oh, that’s such a good question. I wouldn’t dare to answer, but I do think that the—I think what happened in the Industrial Revolution, I’m just absolutely obsessed with at the moment. You know, as a team at LoveFrom, we’ve been doing research. I’m lucky enough to work with this amazing writer called [Jemima], who I think might be here this afternoon. She’s been doing a bunch of research on whether it’s sort of physical objects, or social consequences. And I think because I see design as much more than objects, I think for example, there were two companies in England that really were born out of—they were Quakers. There was one called Cadbury’s, and the other was a company called Fry’s. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Both Birmingham, right? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: I think they were. I think in the Midlands. 

PATRICK COLLISON: Yeah.

SIR JONY IVE KBE: But what was so interesting was the people that ran these companies, they also designed the housing. And you don’t just design a place to put bedrooms. Housing, which meant towns, which meant this sense of civic responsibility. And of course that was appropriate, because people were moving, and the Industrial Revolution was not just a mass manufacture for the first time in history, but it was this huge movement from the land to cities—which had never happened before. 

And so I just think that generally, when we talk about these huge shifts, of course we all get nervous and worried, but there are wonderfully encouraging prototypes that we can look to. So just after Cadbury’s and Fry’s—they were first—there was Hershey’s in Philadelphia, I think, and a very similar approach and concern. I know less about that specific example, but so, I love it when the innovation is—it’s cultural, it’s political, very often it’s spiritual, and it’s manifested in buildings. 

PATRICK COLLISON: You speak in public now very rarely, and so, of course, we’re very grateful that you’re here. We’re at a programmable financial infrastructure conference. 

[Laughter]

PATRICK COLLISON: How and why should people—and of course the businesses here are from every crevice and aspect and different sector of the economy—but for people in the infrastructure domain, or for businesses like Stripe, and maybe Stripe is kind of an example or can stand in for other businesses where, ostensibly, perhaps one ought not care intensely about design in the way that perhaps a consumer electronics company ought to—why should a business with the characteristics that Stripe has care so much? 

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Well, if Stripe didn’t, Stripe wouldn’t be Stripe, and you wouldn’t be sitting here. So every bone in my body, I truly believe that if we want to participate as members of the species, I actually don’t think we have a choice. I think it’s an obligation and a responsibility to care for each other. And I mean Freud said a great thing. Freud said all there is, is love and work, work and love. That’s all there is. 

And so we spend a lot of time working, and so if we elect to spend our time working not caring about other people, I think not only do other people suffer, I think we suffer. I think that’s a corrosive existence. And so I think it’s—I would see it as a—not only a responsibility, but truly a privilege if we get to practice and express our concern and our care for one another. Yeah. I don’t see it as a—I don’t carve my existence up in that way of thinking this is, with my commercial hat on, or my—I’m just Jony. 

PATRICK COLLISON: On that note, thank you so much for joining us.

SIR JONY IVE KBE: Thank you very much.