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Sir Jony Ive, designer

Sir Jony Ive, designer, shares the eight tracks, book and luxury item he would take with him if cast away to a desert island. With Lauren Laverne.

Sir Jony Ive is a designer who is best known for his pioneering work at Apple alongside his friend and colleague, the late Steve Jobs. Jony鈥檚 creative vision is behind some of the company鈥檚 seminal products which have transformed the way we live today including phones, music players and watches.

He was born in Chingford in east London and loved drawing and spending time in his father鈥檚 workshop where the two of them made the young Jony鈥檚 Christmas presents including a go-kart, a treehouse and a toboggan.

He studied Industrial Design at Newcastle Polytechnic and moved to San Francisco to work for Apple in 1992. In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to the company, having been ousted several years earlier, and the two of them set about revolutionising the landscape for home computers with the creation of the iMac.
In 2019 Jony set up his own company LoveFrom with the industrial designer Marc Newson. In 2023 Jony and his team designed a foldable Red Nose for Comic Relief and in the same year the company launched a scholarship programme aimed at increasing representation in the design industry.

In 2012 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to design and enterprise.

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Paula McGinley

Release date:

57 minutes

On radio

Tomorrow 10:00

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