Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products Read Online Free Page B

the firm’s designers drove their own cars into the studio and put sheets over them,saying they were for a secret project. 16 The trick worked and RWG had gotten the job. Taking RWG’s cue, if a client came to visit their offices in Hoxton, Jony and his Tangerine partners made sure the studio was stacked with all the prototypes and foam models they’d created on earlier projects. When the client left, the models would be put back in storage. 17
    Jony, Grinyer, and Darbyshire designed power tools for Bosche and electronic equipment for Goldstar. The three designers gave their full attention to a simple barber’s comb for Brian Drumm, a hairdresser in Scotland. Jony’s concept contained a spirit level in the handle so that the barber could hold it in the right position while clipping his clients’ locks. It’s still sold for cutting single-length bobs and other precision haircuts. The job had a small budget, but, characteristically, the designers gave it their full attention. “Brian Drumm chose Jon’s beautiful concept for the hair-cutting comb, but I worked painstakingly to translate it into an engineering design for production,” said Darbyshire. It was ultimately worth it: The comb went on to win an award from the highly prestigious German Industrie Forum in 1991, burnishing the firm’s reputation.
    The Hoxton neighborhood suited Tangerine. Jony and Grinyer joined a local gym (Jony to this day does a lot of gym training). “This was old Hoxton, not what Hoxton is now,” said Grinyer. “So in the gym there were guys boxing while Jony and I were trying to get fit on running machines and lifting weights.” Jony’s old friend from college, Tonge, worked just around the corner and visited often. He remembered the area as “very similar to San Francisco’s modern South Park neighborhood, near some tough areas but generally full of high-end professionals and a thriving work and art scene. There were also lots of hardware stores and raw-material suppliers, which made it easier to mine for the young designers in the area,” including Ross Lovegrove and Julian Brown. 18 “The late eighties was a good vintage. ID was not yet fashionable so alot of people were doing it for the right reasons—to make good design, not become stars.”
    A year after Jony joined Tangerine, the three principals were joined by a fourth team member, Peter Phillips. The men shared an interlinking work experience: A 1982 graduate of Central Saint Martins College with a BA in ID, Phillips met Grinyer at Central, knew Darbyshire when they both worked at IDEO, and had encountered Jony at RWG.
    “When I first met [Jony], he was just starting,” said Phillips. “My impression of him was that he was a really nice bloke, just one of these delightful gentlemen. He is what he looks like. He does have this very quiet demeanor about him. Very generous, but he wasn’t very serious, always had the ability to just laugh about things. But he was bloody good at what he did.” 19
    Like Jony, Phillips brought some clients with him, including two electronics giants, Hitachi and LG Electronics. In the middle of the recession, LG especially was a huge win. The Korean giant had set up its first Euro design center in Dublin, Ireland, and wanted a European design firm. “We got into LG early on and all were very enthusiastic,” said Phillips. “It was fantastic and allowed us to design some great stuff.”
    The four designers were equal business partners in the venture. There were disagreements along the way, mostly between old friends Grinyer and Darbyshire, but they got through them. “Sometimes it came down to who could shout loudest but we always came to an amicable arrangement,” said Phillips. “It was something we’d brush under the carpet after a few minutes. Jony and I were the diplomats of the group, we used to say.” The young business also had to be careful with its finances. “We were sensible people so we never really pushed the finances