Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple with the unenviable task of turning around the company he had founded. One night Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away in a studio at Apple, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes, Jobs instantly realized he had found a talent who could reverse the company's long decline.

That young designer was Jony Ive.

Ive's collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world's most iconic products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone. These designs have overturned entire industries and created the world's most powerful brand.

Along the way, Ive has become the world's leading technology innovator, won countless awards, earned a place on the 2013 Time 100 list and has been knighted for his services to design and enterprise. Yet little is known about the shy, softly spoken designer that Jobs referred to as his 'spiritual partner' at Apple.

This book offers a detailed portrait of a creative genius, based on interviews with Ive's former colleagues and extensive research. From his early interest in industrial design through his education at Newcastle Polytechnic and meteoric rise at Apple, we discover the principles and practices that led Ive to become the designer of his generation.

'Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard.' Jony Ive

'Sheds new light on technology's most-watched design team. Rare glimpses into working practices at Apple.' The Observer

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Supported by essential, insider research, Kahney (Inside Steve's Brain), who has covered Apple for over a dozen years and is now editor of CultofMac.com, puts the spotlight on Jony Ive, one of the most significant designer minds behind Apple's remarkable products. Ive grew up fascinated with taking things apart and, after a rebellious goth stage in the 1980s, showed excellent design skills at school. Following an apprenticeship at the prestigious Roberts Weaver Group, Ive teamed with another London designer, Martin Darbyshire to found Tangerine Design, and it was those cutting-edge designs that brought him to the attention of Apple's Bob Brenner. Apple tried to recruit Ive several times before they landed him in 1992, putting his maverick creativity to work on a wide of products such as iMac, iBook, Power Mac, and iPod. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple before his death, he said of Ive: "[Jony Ive] has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me." It is the powerful message of unbridled creativity and a rebel spirit of Ive that Kahney captures so ably in this respectful tribute to the man. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

The life and creative influence of Apple's unassuming design savant. Former Wired.com news editor and Apple authority Kahney (Inside Steve's Brain, 2008) examines the company's senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan "Jony" Paul Ive, a 46-year-old British expatriate and technological whiz. Born in a conservative London suburb and raised by an intuitive, innovative silversmith father and a psychotherapist mother, Ive's penchant for tinkering wasn't hampered by a dyslexia diagnosis in his teens (a dysfunction shared with Steve Jobs, the author notes). Emboldened by his father, Ive excelled in drawing and sophisticated technical design throughout college and, upon bonding with the Apple's Mac platform, worked through an escalating series of high-profile assignments and co-partnered his own firm. In 1991, he scored an Apple consultancy and induction into thenChief of Industrial Design Bob Brunner's "dream team." Ive's induction into the computer hardware culture was seamless since he had already taken several exploratory jaunts to northern California, an area that attracted him for its embrace and cultivation of emerging tech talent. Through an impressive roster of interviews with a variety of authors, design experts, and former and current Apple employees, Kahney conveys the urgency and the demand for Ive's immense talent within the tech universe. In the endnotes, the author takes delicious delight in describing Apple's notoriously steely reputation for secrecy and remarks that while those same forthcoming interviewees are more than likely bound by Apple's stringent nondisclosure agreement, the book wouldn't have been possible without their risky participation. From his award-winning work with the Newton MessagePad to the iMac, iPad Mini and a seventh-generation operating system, Ive has become an indirect preceptor on how the world exchanges information. An adulating biography of Apple's left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.