蘋果"設計之魂"喬納森爵士要引退

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.

在蘋果(Apple)工作20多年、取得一系列卓越成就之後，約尼•艾夫（Jony Ive，即喬納森•艾夫爵士(Sir Jonathan Ive)）對獲得榮譽已習以爲常。3年前，出生於倫敦東北部欽福特(Chingford)的他因“對設計和企業做出傑出貢獻”獲封爵位。上週，喬納森爵士升任蘋果首席設計官。蘋果如今已成爲世界市值第一的公司，這在很大程度上也得益於他孜孜不倦的努力。

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.

無需贅言，喬納森爵士是蘋果的設計老大，給他這個豪華頭銜、提升另外兩名高管在他的領導下主管工業和軟件設計業務的決定，讓密切關注蘋果的人們分成了兩派。一些人認爲，這顯示喬納森爵士厭倦了不斷創造創新產品，比如iPod和iPhone，在爲抽身離開鋪路；另一些人則認爲，他獲得了更高的權威。

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.”

無論如何，他現在至少是蘋果的第二號人物，僅次於首席執行官蒂姆•庫克(Tim Cook)。一些人認爲他是頭號人物，理由是他與蘋果創始人史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)生前親密無間的關係，後者曾將喬納森爵士稱爲自己的“靈魂伴侶”。如庫克在宣佈喬納森爵士新職位的正式通告中所說：“一流的設計帶給我們的口碑，將蘋果與世界上所有其他公司區分開來。”

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?

許多其他公司想要追趕蘋果，它們將設計深深融入新產品和新服務的創造過程中，以至於設計的地位超過了銷售、市場等其他功能。這種做法在蘋果身上已充分體現出了價值，爲蘋果帶來了7600億美元的市值。誰不想模仿這樣的成功？

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”.

問題在於，這樣的成功極難模仿，即便一家公司擁有一支同樣富有才華的設計師團隊。不僅製造不止有華麗外觀設計的產品需要付出高昂的成本，而且設計的範圍如今極大地擴大了，遠非1925年荷蘭公司飛利浦(Philips)任命路易斯•卡爾夫(Louis Kalff)爲負責潤色廣告的“宣傳”主管時能比。

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.

沃爾特•艾薩克森(Walter Isaacson)所著喬布斯傳記中的一則故事，體現了聽設計師的話要付出怎樣的代價。1998年，喬納森爵士想要在他設計的彩色iMac上加一個內陷的把手，這主要不是爲了實用考慮，而是爲了讓這款電腦顯得對年紀較大的顧客更友好。蘋果的工程師當時表示反對，稱這個把手成本高昂又不實用。喬布斯當時對這些反對置若罔聞。

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.

好的設計需要深入產品的誕生過程。如英國發明家詹姆斯•戴森(James Dyson)最近接受英國《金融時報》採訪時所說：“如果某樣東西外觀上看起來經過了精心設計，但使用起來不順暢，你會感到惱怒。這會讓設計蒙上污名。”因此，設計師必須從初期就努力搞清楚一件產品是什麼，將如何製造出來，而不是在產品接近成形時設法讓它有好看的外觀。

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.

爲博朗(Braun)設計過剃鬚刀和收音機等產品的設計師迪特爾•拉姆斯(Dieter Rams)，是喬納森爵士崇拜的人之一。博朗的設計信條之一就是：“好的設計要儘量不露痕跡。”一貫的低調而優雅，沒有任何扎眼的細節，這種風格明顯體現在簡潔、近乎樸素的鋁合金機身的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.

蘋果的工業設計並沒有完全遵從德國式實用風格，它還從更加活潑的美國傳統中汲取了靈感。彩色版iPod和其他產品的設計風格可追溯至上世紀中期的一些美國設計師，比如雷蒙德•洛伊(Raymond Loewy)、以及創造了凱迪拉克(Cadillac)的高尾鰭設計的哈利•厄爾(Harley Earl)。喬納森爵士的團隊不知用了何種方法，居然將兩種不同的設計傳統融合到了一起。

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.

如今我們很難記起這一點，不過喬布斯在上世紀90年代末一回到蘋果，似乎就爲自己設定了一個近乎不可能完成的任務——抵制把個人電腦變成一個個裝有軟件的灰色盒子的日益同質化的潮流。通過把艾夫拉入夥，他不僅成功地完成了這一任務，還改變了個人電腦業務的價值所在——對硬件、軟件和服務的整合，這就是價值所在。

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.

這使設計領域變得更有趣、更重要、也更困難。比如，飛利浦有500名設計師在全球18個地方工作，他們的工作已從製造消費設備轉變成思考設備的工作方式，比如思考醫院中的兒童如何與飛利浦製造的人體掃描儀互動。兒童感到越放鬆，就越不需要讓他們鎮定下來。

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，喬納森爵士開始負責掌管蘋果的軟件和工業設計。他現在參與蘋果的一切事務，從蘋果門店的佈置，到蘋果位於加利福尼亞州庫比蒂諾(Cupertino)的新總部的設計和內部傢俱。蘋果正在研發一款汽車，可能是一款自動駕駛汽車，喬納森爵士也參與指導這個項目。

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.

換句話說，喬納森爵士極大地擴展了自己的工作範圍，他的影響力在產品生產中的延伸之廣，對於更早一代的設計師來說是不可想象的。這可能也是在最近《紐約客》(The New Yorker)的一篇人物報道中，他的語氣中帶有深深的疲倦感的原因。他說自己“非常，非常疲倦”，對於他可能想與家人回到英國生活的猜測，他並沒有完全否認。

“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?

“蘋果最卓越的品質就是紀律，”設計公司Frog Design的執行創意總監喬納斯•戴蒙(Jonas Damon)說，“上層從上至下決定公司把努力投入哪些地方。”如果喬納森爵士感到作爲蘋果的設計老大負擔太重，其他公司還有什麼機會？