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The Apple Industrial Design Group is the
industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...
department within
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
, responsible for creating the physical appearance of all Apple products. The group was established so that Apple could design more in-house products, rather than relying on external design firms.
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
wanted to be a part of the design process which was not a very practical thing to do when utilizing external design agencies. Having an in-house design group allowed for changes to be made more efficiently, all while making it easier to maintain the secrecy of upcoming projects.


History

Apple Industrial Design was established in April 1977 when
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
hired Jerry Manock to design the
Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...
housing. Jobs was obsessed with design and style, rumored to linger over appliances at Macy's West, Macy's for inspiration. Jobs and Manock set about establishing the design language that would be used by Apple for its first 10 years. In addition to the Apple II, Manock came to manage Apple Design Guild which consisted of a loose band of in-house designers, among them Bill Dresselhaus—responsible for the Lisa—and Rob Gemmell—responsible for the
Apple IIe The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer. It was released in January 1983 as the successor to the Apple II Plus. The ''e'' in the name stands for ...
and
Apple IIc The Apple IIc is a personal computer introduced by Apple Inc. shortly after the launch of the Macintosh 128K, original Macintosh in 1984. It is essentially a compact and portable version of the Apple IIe. The IIc has a built-in floppy disk driv ...
. It was from this group that a project called "
Snow White "Snow White" is a German fairy tale, first written down in the early 19th century. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', numbered as Tale 53. The original title was ''Sneewittch ...
" emerged. The importance that Jobs put on appearance led to a desire to begin the search for a "world-class" designer or design team to give Apple a unique and uniform design language. It was Manock's suggestion that it be made a contest. The company proceeded to solicit designers from the pages of magazines.


Frog Design

It was out of this contest that
Hartmut Esslinger Hartmut Esslinger (born 5 June 1944) is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is best known for founding the design consultancy Frog Design, frog, and his work for Apple Computer in the early 1980s. Life and career Esslinge ...
and his team at
Frog Design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...
came to Apple and created a unique
design language A design language or design vocabulary is an overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products or architectural settings, creating a coherent design system for styling. Objectives Designers wishing to give their su ...
that took the project's code name and helped establish Apple with a serious
corporate image A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as "born out of st ...
. Though Esslinger originally created a design for the Macintosh, it wasn't until the
Apple IIc The Apple IIc is a personal computer introduced by Apple Inc. shortly after the launch of the Macintosh 128K, original Macintosh in 1984. It is essentially a compact and portable version of the Apple IIe. The IIc has a built-in floppy disk driv ...
, designed with Rob Gemmell, that Apple would first introduce the new design language. From the introduction of the Apple II through the Macintosh Plus, Apple's products favored a beige-like color scheme of differing shades. The Apple IIc was the first to introduce a product with a lighter, creamy off-white color, known in-house as "Fog" (though Esslinger originally argued for bright white), a color that would persist in all Snow White design language products until the introduction of the
Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II) is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Inc., Apple Computer beginning in September 1986. It is the fifth and most powerful model of the Apple II family. The "GS" in the name stands for "Graphics and Sound" ...
in late 1986, which marked a turning point in the unification of Apple products. Apple selected a warm gray color they called "Platinum" for the IIGS and all subsequent desktop computers until the introduction of the
iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...
in 1998. (A dark gray color was adopted for the PowerBook line of laptops and its peripherals). The original
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
was designed by Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama with guidance from Steve Jobs. In doing so, they unwittingly created an enduring iconic design. Though variously redressed in "Snow White" details (such as the Macintosh SE), all the way to the translucent iMac, there is a legacy imparted by the original Macintosh design. Having worked 90-hour weeks, Manock and the rest of the Mac team were exhausted, and he failed to register the Macintoshes in time for the design award consideration. Esslinger would not make the same mistake with the SE and ultimately received the recognition denied Manock, which often led to Esslinger being credited with the original design of the Macintosh, a perception Esslinger and
Frog Design frog (styled as ''"frog, part of Capgemini Invent"'') is a global creative and design consultancy founded in 1969 by industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger in Mutlangen, Germany, where it was initially named “esslinger design”. Soon after the ...
always corrected. However, by the end of 1985, Steve Jobs resigned from Apple and Hartmut Esslinger and his Frog Design team followed, later working with Jobs at
NeXT NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...
.


Reformation

By the early 1990s, Apple discovered that the Snow White language that had served them so well through the 80s was being copied by its generic IBM PC competitors, causing Apple to lose some of its unique identity. With the move away from Frog Design, Apple chose to bring all industrial design in-house by creating the Apple Industrial Design Group, headed by Robert Brunner except for portable computer devices design projects led by Kazuo Kawasaki. Though many of the new designs reflected the legacy of Esslinger's Snow White language, the new design group began to rapidly move in its direction, which can be clearly seen in landmark products of the Espresso language such as the Macintosh Color Classic. The list of innovative designs which clearly defined Apple products in the marketplace continued through the 90s.


Return of Steve Jobs

The return of Steve Jobs in 1997 along with the appointment of designer Jonathan Ive (who had been working for Apple since 1992) as senior vice president of industrial design, ushered in a new era for Apple's design, drawing heavily on the design philosophy of Dieter Rams for Braun, and adding vibrant color and translucent details. The launch of the
iMac The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company's Mac (computer), Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since and evol ...
in 1998 also drew on some of the iconic elements of the original Macintosh, such as the all-in-one format and top-mounted handle. The successive design language adopted by Apple can be split into two aspects: a white or black color scheme, usually with a glossy texture and plastic cases; and a bead blasted aluminum and glass look. The former was exclusively used for consumer products, such as the MacBook and iPod, while the latter was mainly used in professional products such as the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. However, more recent revisions of the iMac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod lines have adopted the aluminum of the professional line with sleek black elements. Apple developed a
unibody A vehicle frame, also historically known as its ''chassis'', is the main supporting structure of a motor vehicle to which all other components are attached, comparable to the skeleton of an organism. Until the 1930s, virtually every car had ...
water-milling process to achieve sharp lines and graceful curves as well as end-to-end structural stability from their aluminum products. Both looks often use basic rectilinear forms modified with slight contours and rounded edges.


Resignation of Jonathan Ive

in 2019, Jonathan Ive left Apple, and started his new design office LoveFrom with longtime collaborator Marc Newson. Following Ive's departure, there was significant turnover in the design group and its leadership. Evans Hankey took over as head of hardware design in June 2019 and later held the role of vice president of industrial design, but on October 21, 2022, Apple announced that she would depart the company. The design team began reporting directly into Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams; in 2024, Molly Anderson was named as the industrial design leader, with most of the industrial design team reporting into her.


Apple designers


Timeline of Apple products


See also

*
Design language A design language or design vocabulary is an overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products or architectural settings, creating a coherent design system for styling. Objectives Designers wishing to give their su ...
* Human interface guidelines * AppleTalk Connector Family * Susan Kare * Apple Inc. design motifs


References

{{Apple hardware before 1998 Industrial Design Group Industrial Design Group