A recent SF Chronicle/Bloomberg article highlighted the work of Apple senior VP of industrial design, Jonathan Ive.  He oversaw the development of the early candy-colored iMacs, the miniature G4 Cube computer, the iPod, iPhone and iPad.  Pretty impressive accomplishments!

The article features a quote that I want to hold onto, about his design goal,

“is not self-expression.  It’s to make something that looks like it wasn’t really designed at all – because it’s inevitable.”

This brings to mind the idea of a piece of marble or wood, that due to its unique qualities, has a predesitined sculpture embedded inside, awaiting the creative designer to chisel and conjure it out.  The new UI challenge is to apply this to new forms of nature, such as mountains and streams of information and data.

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