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After two remarkably successful decades at Apple, Jony Ive is used to receiving honorary recognition. Sir Jonathan, who was born in Chingford in northeast London, was knighted for “services to design and enterprise” three years ago. This week, he gained the new title of chief design officer of what has become the world’s most valuable company, in large part due to his relentless efforts.
在苹果(Apple)工作20多年、取得一系列卓越成就之后，约尼•艾夫（Jony Ive，即乔纳森•艾夫爵士(Sir Jonathan Ive)）对获得荣誉已习以为常。3年前，出生于伦敦东北部钦福特(Chingford)的他因“对设计和企业做出杰出贡献”获封爵位。上周，乔纳森爵士升任苹果首席设计官。苹果如今已成为世界市值第一的公司，这在很大程度上也得益于他孜孜不倦的努力。
It hardly needed emphasising that Sir Jonathan is design supremo of Apple, and the decision to give him a grand title and promote two executives to run the industrial and software design divisions under him has divided Apple-watchers. Some regard it as a sign that Sir Jonathan is easing his way out, tired from producing a stream of innovative products such as the iPod and iPhone; others that he has accrued yet more authority.
无需赘言，乔纳森爵士是苹果的设计老大，给他这个豪华头衔、提升另外两名高管在他的领导下主管工业和软件设计业务的决定，让密切关注苹果的人们分成了两派。一些人认为，这显示乔纳森爵士厌倦了不断创造创新产品，比如iPod和iPhone，在为抽身离开铺路；另一些人则认为，他获得了更高的权威。
Either way, he is at least the second most powerful executive at Apple after Tim Cook, its chief executive. Some regard him as the most powerful, thanks to his symbiotic relationship with the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, who once described Sir Jonathan as his “spiritual partner”. As Mr Cook put it in the official announcement of his new role: “Our reputation for world-class design differentiates Apple from every other company in the world.”
无论如何，他现在至少是苹果的第二号人物，仅次于首席执行官蒂姆•库克(Tim Cook)。一些人认为他是头号人物，理由是他与苹果创始人史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)生前亲密无间的关系，后者曾将乔纳森爵士称为自己的“灵魂伴侣”。如库克在宣布乔纳森爵士新职位的正式通告中所说：“一流的设计带给我们的口碑，将苹果与世界上所有其他公司区分开来。”
Many other companies would like to match Apple by integrating design so deeply into the creation of new products and services that it outstrips functions such as sales and marketing. It has paid off for Apple to the tune of $760bn — its current market capitalisation. Who would not want to mimic that?
许多其他公司想要追赶苹果，它们将设计深深融入新产品和新服务的创造过程中，以至于设计的地位超过了销售、市场等其他功能。这种做法在苹果身上已充分体现出了价值，为苹果带来了7600亿美元的市值。谁不想模仿这样的成功？
The problem is that it is incredibly hard, even if a company has an equally talented team of designers. Not only is making things with more than a design flourish applied to the outside expensive, but the scope of design has expanded radically since 1925, when Philips, the Dutch company, hired Louis Kalff to polish its advertising and named him head of “propaganda”.
问题在于，这样的成功极难模仿，即便一家公司拥有一支同样富有才华的设计师团队。不仅制造不止有华丽外观设计的产品需要付出高昂的成本，而且设计的范围如今极大地扩大了，远非1925年荷兰公司飞利浦(Philips)任命路易斯•卡尔夫(Louis Kalff)为负责润色广告的“宣传”主管时能比。
The cost of listening to what designers say is illustrated by one story in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. Sir Jonathan wanted to place a recessed carrying handle in the brightly coloured iMacs that he designed in 1998, less for practical reasons than to make the machine seem friendlier to older buyers. Apple’s engineers protested that the handle would be expensive and impractical; Mr Jobs ignored them.
沃尔特•艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson)所著乔布斯传记中的一则故事，体现了听设计师的话要付出怎样的代价。1998年，乔纳森爵士想要在他设计的彩色iMac上加一个内陷的把手，这主要不是为了实用考虑，而是为了让这款电脑显得对年纪较大的顾客更友好。苹果的工程师当时表示反对，称这个把手成本高昂又不实用。乔布斯当时对这些反对置若罔闻。
Good design runs deep. As James Dyson, the British inventor, argued in a recentinterview in the Financial Times, “If something looks designed on the outside but doesn’t work well, you hate it. It gives design a bad name.” Thus, designers have to work from the earliest stages on what a product is, and how it will be built, rather than making it look good once it is close to completion.
好的设计需要深入产品的诞生过程。如英国发明家詹姆斯•戴森(James Dyson)最近接受英国《金融时报》采访时所说：“如果某样东西外观上看起来经过了精心设计，但使用起来不顺畅，你会感到恼怒。这会让设计蒙上污名。”因此，设计师必须从初期就努力搞清楚一件产品是什么，将如何制造出来，而不是在产品接近成形时设法让它有好看的外观。
One of Sir Jonathan’s heroes is Dieter Rams, the designer of Braun products such as shavers and radios. Among Braun’s design mottos is: “Good design is as little design as possible.” The tradition of being low-key and yet elegant, without any distracting details, is evident in the slim, almost austere, aluminium MacBook.
为博朗(Braun)设计过剃须刀和收音机等产品的设计师迪特尔•拉姆斯(Dieter Rams)，是乔纳森爵士崇拜的人之一。博朗的设计信条之一就是：“好的设计要尽量不露痕迹。”一贯的低调而优雅，没有任何扎眼的细节，这种风格明显体现在简洁、近乎朴素的铝合金机身的MacBook上。
Apple does not solely follow the German functional style of industrial design. It also draws on a more exuberant US tradition, reaching back to mid-century designers such as Raymond Loewy and Harley Earl — the man who fitted fins to Cadillacs — in the colourful versions of iPods and other products. Sir Jonathan’s team somehow manages to blend the two approaches.
苹果的工业设计并没有完全遵从德国式实用风格，它还从更加活泼的美国传统中汲取了灵感。彩色版iPod和其他产品的设计风格可追溯至上世纪中期的一些美国设计师，比如雷蒙德•洛伊(Raymond Loewy)、以及创造了凯迪拉克(Cadillac)的高尾鳍设计的哈利•厄尔(Harley Earl)。乔纳森爵士的团队不知用了何种方法，居然将两种不同的设计传统融合到了一起。
It is hard to remember now, but Jobs seemed to have set himself an almost impossible task on returning to Apple in the late 1990s — to resist the steady commoditisation of personal computers into a set of grey boxes containing software. By enlisting Mr Ive, he both achieved this and altered where value lay — in the integration of hardware, software and services.
如今我们很难记起这一点，不过乔布斯在上世纪90年代末一回到苹果，似乎就为自己设定了一个近乎不可能完成的任务——抵制把个人电脑变成一个个装有软件的灰色盒子的日益同质化的潮流。通过把艾夫拉入伙，他不仅成功地完成了这一任务，还改变了个人电脑业务的价值所在——对硬件、软件和服务的整合，这就是价值所在。
That makes the field of design more interesting, important, and difficult. Philips, for example, has 500 designers working in 18 global locations, whose work has shifted from making consumer devices to thinking about the way, for example, children in hospitals react to Philips-made body scanners. The more relaxed they feel, the less the need to sedate them.
这使设计领域变得更有趣、更重要、也更困难。比如，飞利浦有500名设计师在全球18个地方工作，他们的工作已从制造消费设备转变成思考设备的工作方式，比如思考医院中的儿童如何与飞利浦制造的人体扫描仪互动。儿童感到越放松，就越不需要让他们镇定下来。
Sir Jonathan was given oversight of software as well as industrial design at Apple in 2012. He now has a hand in everything from the layout of Apple stores to the design of its new headquarters in Cupertino, California, and the furniture inside. Apple is working on a car — maybe a self-driving car — and he is helping to steer this project too.
2012年，乔纳森爵士开始负责掌管苹果的软件和工业设计。他现在参与苹果的一切事务，从苹果门店的布置，到苹果位于加利福尼亚州库比蒂诺(Cupertino)的新总部的设计和内部家具。苹果正在研发一款汽车，可能是一款自动驾驶汽车，乔纳森爵士也参与指导这个项目。
He has, in other words, made his job far bigger, extending his reach into aspects of production that an earlier generation of designers would not have dreamt of taking on. This could account for his tone of profound weariness in a recent profile in The New Yorker. He described himself as “deeply, deeply tired” and only half deflected the suggestion that he would like to return with his family to live in the UK.
换句话说，乔纳森爵士极大地扩展了自己的工作范围，他的影响力在产品生产中的延伸之广，对于更早一代的设计师来说是不可想象的。这可能也是在最近《纽约客》(The New Yorker)的一篇人物报道中，他的语气中带有深深的疲倦感的原因。他说自己“非常，非常疲倦”，对于他可能想与家人回到英国生活的猜测，他并没有完全否认。
“Apple’s most remarkable quality is discipline,” says Jonas Damon, executive creative director of Frog Design, a design agency. “From the top down, they dictate what the company puts its effort behind.” If being Apple’s great design dictator has become too much for Sir Jonathan, what chance do other companies have?
“苹果最卓越的品质就是纪律，”设计公司Frog Design的执行创意总监乔纳斯•戴蒙(Jonas Damon)说，“上层从上至下决定公司把努力投入哪些地方。”如果乔纳森爵士感到作为苹果的设计老大负担太重，其他公司还有什么机会？
