Legendary designer Jony Ive’s legacy continues to fade away within Apple as one of the last designers from his era steps down, reports Bloomberg.
Peter Russell-Clarke was a senior industrial designer at Apple and spent nearly 20 years at the company before his departure in October. His work had a significant impact on the company’s image, from his work on Apple’s most popular hardware and even down to the look of the Apple retail stores and Apple Park campus.
According to a biography of Russell-Clarke for Vast, his new employer, he first ran his own design studio where he worked with clients including Nike and Swatch, and later became the Global Group Design Manager for Nokia. After he was tapped to join Ive’s team of industrial designers at Apple in 2005, he worked on the designs of the iPhone, iPad, Macs, and the Apple Watch. He is credited on over 1,000 patents for various Apple designs.
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The departure is another blow to Apple’s renowned design team, which has lost many of the designers Ive worked with during his tenure. This exodus followed Ive’s resignation from Apple in 2019 in order to found his own design firm, LoveFrom. The company has worked with Airbnb and Ferrari, among other clients. LoveFrom also had a design contract with Apple that ended in 2022; one recent product with publicly known ties to Ive is the design of the 2021 M1 iMac.
The structure of Apple’s design team has changed heavily in recent years. Evans Hankey succeed Ive in his role, only for her to leave relatively quickly after only three years earlier this year; Apple’s designers now report directly to Chief Operating Officer Jeff WilliamsJeff Williams is Apple's Chief Operating Officer, making him primarily responsible for the company's worldwide operations and procurement. Born in 1963, Williams holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Duke University. Williams has held his current role at Apple since December 2015. Among leading worldwide operations, Williams is also responsible.... Reports also indicated that the design team was not given last say over Apple Vision Pro before the reveal, breaking precedent.
This announcement follows the departure of two other executives reported this month. One report indicated Vice President of Product Design Tang Tan, who worked on the design of the iPhone and Apple Watch, will depart Apple in February next year. Another report suggested Steve Hotelling, an Apple veteran executive who contributed to the Multi-Touch, Touch ID, and Face ID technologies, is also soon to retire after two decades.
Jony Ive had a key role in Apple’s success, with Steve Jobs once calling him his ‘spiritual partner’ at the company to biographer Walter Isaacson. Ive was at the company for a few years before Jobs’ rise to CEO, when the two immediately clicked. The duo’s collaboration on the original design of the iMac in 1998 was their first hit, kickstarting the company’s rise and establishing its modern image.
Russell-Clarke is moving on to a new role as the Industrial Design Adviser for the space technology startup company Vast, company officials announced Monday. In the role, he is set to help the company build up an industrial design team.
“Peter’s design contributions to Apple products, including the iPhone, Apple Stores, and Apple’s new HQ over the last 17 years speak for themselves.” said Vast CEO Max Haot. “We look forward to having the chance to bring this incredible experience to the design of our space station products.”
