Apple design team ditching pen and paper for Apple Pencil, says Jony Ive

Ive says: “There are clearly things you can do sketching and writing on the iPad which you could never dream of doing in the analogue world.”

 

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Apple’s design team is starting to ditch pens and sketchbooks in favour of the iPad and the recently released Apple Pencil, according to the company’s chief design officer Sir Jony Ive.

The Apple Pencil was released at the beginning of September alongside the new iPad Pro.

The pencil’s release came as something of a surprise, as Apple’s former chief executive Steve Jobs famously hated the idea of a stylus and at the launch of the iPhone in 2007 said: “Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away and you loose ‘em, yeuch.”

In an interview with the Telegraph, Ive says that the design team at Apple is starting to use the new product.

He says: “Many of us in the design team have worked together for 20 plus years. We’ve always drawn in our sketchbooks, and for the first time – despite flirting with some alternatives a couple of years ago – I’m seeing people starting to use the iPad and Apple Pencil.”

He adds: “Our personal experience has been that there are definitely affordances and opportunities now that you have a much more natural and intuitive environment to make marks, there are clearly things you can do sketching and writing on the iPad which you could never dream of doing in the analogue world.”

• Sir Jony Ive is among ten designers named in Design Week’s inaugural Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame aims to recognise individuals within design who have made a significant contribution to the industry, have provided inspiration and incisive thinking, or who have simply created consistently brilliant work.

The Hall of Fame designers will be recognised at this year’s Design Week Awards ceremony at the Roundhouse in London on 25 November.


 

To book your place at this year’s Design Week Awards, visit awards.designweek.co.uk or contact the awards team on 0207 970 4701.

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  • John Frieda November 12, 2015 at 3:27 pm

    Probably in much the same way the design team at Apple have been using Wacoms for a good while now then?…not that they’d admit it.

  • Paul Hillary November 13, 2015 at 10:16 am

    Always an alternative, never a substitute

  • Jonathan Salisbury November 13, 2015 at 2:31 pm

    Why is this news? They get them for free! I’d probably use one too it was given to me.

    But if they preferred to use pen and paper… now that would be news!

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