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 advan ...

department within

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

responsible for crafting the physical appearance of all Apple products. The group was established so that Apple could design more products in-house, rather than relying on external design firms.

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

wanted to be a part of the design process more than was practical to do when utilizing external design agencies, and the 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

hired

Jerry Manock Jerrold Clifford Manock (born February 21, 1944) is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manoc ...

to design the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

housing. Jobs was notoriously obsessed with design and style, rumored to linger over appliances at

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

for inspiration. Jobs and Manock set about establishing the design language that would be used by Apple for the 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 and IIc. It was from this group that a project called "

Snow White "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as Ta ...

" 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 and 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, and his work for Apple Computers in the early 1980s. Life and career Esslinger was born in ...

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 which took the project's code-name and helped establish Apple with a serious corporate image. Though Esslinger originally created a design for the Macintosh, it wasn't until the

Apple IIc The Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, is Apple Computer's first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The result was a notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could be transported from place to pl ...

, designed with Rob Gemmell, that Apple would first introduce the new design language. From the introduction of the Apple II through the

Macintosh Plus The Macintosh Plus computer is the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2,599. As an evolutiona ...

, 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 The Snow White design language is an industrial design language which was developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and to ...

products until the introduction of the

Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST ...

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 computers until the introduction of the

iMac iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms. In it ...

in 1998 (although a darker shade of gray was adopted for the PowerBook line and various peripherals). The original

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

was designed by Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama with ample 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 The Macintosh SE is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, from March 1987 to October 1990. It marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Mac ...

), 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 may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

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 Robert Brunner (born 1958) is an American industrial designer. Brunner was the Director of Industrial Design for Apple Computer from 1989 to 1996 and is a founder and current partner at Ammunition Design Group. Biography Brunner received a Bac ...

except for portable computer devices design projects led by

Kazuo Kawasaki Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Becaus ...

. 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 own direction, which can be clearly seen in landmark products of the Espresso language such as the

Macintosh Color Classic The Macintosh Color Classic (sold as the Macintosh Colour Classic in PAL regions) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from February 1993 to May 1995 (up to January 1998 in PAL markets). It has an all ...

. 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 ushered in a new era for Apple design, and the appointment of designer

Jonathan Ive Sir Jonathan Paul Ive (born 27 February 1967) is a British industrial and product designer, as well as businessman. Ive was the chief design officer (CDO) of Apple Inc. from 1997 until 2019 (known as senior vice principal of industrial design ...

, drawing heavily on the design philosophy of

Dieter Rams Dieter Rams (born 20 May 1932) is a German industrial designer and retired academic who is closely associated with the consumer products company Braun, the furniture company Vitsœ, and the functionalist school of industrial design. His unobtr ...

for Braun, and infusing them with vibrant color and translucent details. The launch of the

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 ha ...

water-milling process in order 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

Jonathan Ive left Apple and started his new design office LoveFrom with Marc Newson. Evans Hankey is the head of hardware design at the design group since June 2019. Apple announced on October 21, 2022, that Hankey would depart the company, but she'll remain at the company for a temporary period. Apple has not yet announced Hankey's replacement.

Apple designers

Timeline of Apple products

References

{{Apple hardware before 1998 Apple Inc. subsidiaries Apple Inc. industrial design