Jonathan Ive’s Blue Peter badge

My design pleasure of this week has definitely been Sir Jonathan Ive’s appearance on Blue Peter.

Blue Peter's Barney Harwood with Sir Jonathan Ive
Blue Peter’s Barney Harwood with Sir Jonathan Ive

The Apple design guru was presented with an extremely rare and much-coveted Gold Blue Peter badge – other badge-holders include The Queen and David Beckham.

And the real pleasure came in seeing Ive, taking time out in Apple’s HQ, giving a design crit to three children who had come up with designs for an all-in-one lunchbox/school-bag/pencilcase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLUn7xCuQxo

Imagine, as a child, sending in your sketches to Blue Peter and having them critiqued by Jony Ive (‘the drawings are really fabulous’, he says). I can’t imagine a better encouragement to pursuing a career in design.

Ive himself talked very vividly about taking inspiration from a Blue Peter project he saw as a child, in which a detergent bottle was turned into a paintbrush-holder.

At a time when questions are being asked and fears are being raised about whether and how to teach design to children – here was a perfect example of how creativity can inspire further creativity.

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