We meet the “legendary” people who made Apple the company it is today. Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, Tony Fadell, Tim Cook… but Behind them are more professionals who also played a huge role. People like Susan Kare or Shaan Pruden.
Recently, one of these great figures announced that she was retiring. We are talking about Bart Andrew, a designer who had worked at Apple for no less than 32 years and reported directly to Jonathan Ive in his heyday. A legend that leaves its mark.
One of the fathers of the design of the iPhone and Apple Watch
For Apple, it’s a total loss, since André is one of the designers who worked on the design of the iPhone and the Apple Watch. He went to work in Cupertino in 1992, when he was 27, and past articles describe him as someone who got up at 5 a.m. every day “looking for new ideas” for design of products.
And I must have been wrong, because Bart André is one of the Apple employees with the most patents to his credit. Among his routines, the source recounts how he tried to design patterns for details like drilling the speakers of a product that would then pass under the watchful eye of Jonathan Ive.
Andre also had his big moment after Jonathan Ive left and was replaced by Evans Hankey. The designer also left Apple’s ranks in 2022, so André had to temporarily take charge of putting the design team in order until Apple decided to put him under COO Jeff Williams .
It’s not the best time to design at Apple
It is precisely this gesture that caused some unease within Apple’s design team. They no longer work under the leadership of a designer, but rather an executive specialized in operations. According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, this “caused some irritation” among designers from Apple who would also have seen how the budget of their projects was reduced.
Seeing someone of Bart André’s stature retire at the age of 59 can be seen as another sign that the company’s team of pioneering designers is gradually fading away. I only had to see the Vision Pro for myself to see that Apple is still great at product design, but it doesn’t seem like the days when Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive were championing this design above other departments disappear. with the same intensity.
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