Hasta La Ideas

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pAs a designer you can’t help but think about weird stuff. I can’t help but imagine that if curious space aliens with no knowledge of human artifacts came to this planet and went through my apartment, they’d initially find little to distinguish one possession from another. But I’d be willing to wager that it is the A HREF=”http://www.apple.com/iphone/” iPhone 4/A, amidst the clutter of objects on my desk, that they would pick up and begin inquisitively licking or running their antennae over or what have you. /p

pThe new iPhone is currently the standout object on my desk, this thing that looks like a mere black rectangle from across the room but starts to look like something very different at the range it’s meant to be used at. Holding it, you understand at once why Apple has physical stores; while you can watch iPhone commercials or see print campaigns about its features, when you first hold this exquisitely-crafted object you have a different experience entirely, one that cannot be adequately conveyed in two dimensions. Having seen countless photos of the device in advance, I was still surprised by the real thing when I popped it out of the box and touched it./p

p”A big part of the experience of a physical object has to do with the materials,” says Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design, during a brief chat with Core77. “[At Apple] we experiment with and explore materials, processing them, learning about the inherent properties of the material–and the process of transforming it from raw material to finished product; for example, understanding exactly how the processes of machining it or grinding it affect it. That understanding, that preoccupation with the materials and processes, is [very] essential to the way we work.” /p

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pIt is this sort of materials obsession and constant experimentation that led to a decision to use scratch-resistant aluminosilicate glass for the front and back of the phone, as well as developing their own variant of stainless steel to edge the device. When you see the breaks, the three little black reveals that interrupt the band, in photographs, you could be forgiven for assuming you’re seeing three separate strips of metal with gaps in between; but in fact it’s all one piece. br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/core77_speaks_with_jonathan_ive_on_the_design_of_the_iphone_4_material_matters_16817.asp”(more…)/a
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