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The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

fastcompany.com

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Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#121

Post by cmiles74 »

ballenf wrote: post #29
zarzavat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Sadly rivers run dry..” It seems obvious that he is talking about his personal joy running out. Because that’s what he said.

I see that take on it. Maybe the lesson is that for employees who happen to believe that Apple's river had run dry, the message would be hard to interpret as personal to the author. Or that the river running dry personally is potentially contagious.

This whole story highlights how top-of-mind this fear that the "river" of innovation at Apple might be running dry really was for the leadership of this design team.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#122

Post by mikeryan »

lupire wrote: post #68
arrrg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t quite get it. Firing that designer would not increase my trust in the design leadership. It would seem thin skinned, skittish, cruel, deeply immoral and evil, leading me to lose a lot of trust, feeling as though creating a culture of fear is the goal. That behavior seems completely incomprehensible to me, especially since you need to have an extremely tortured reading of that e-mail to read it as an atta…

Artists are a petty and vindictive culture, since value is subjective and there's no profit for being pretty good but not the annointed winner.

Art may be subjective but product design is not. We have a whole host of ways to measure success at it.

I feel it’s a mistake to conflate art with design. While related they are separate disciplines.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#123

Post by kzrdude »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #38
ballenf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that take on it. Maybe the lesson is that for employees who happen to believe that Apple's river had run dry, the message would be hard to interpret as personal to the author. Or that the river running dry personally is potentially contagious.

That’s the other lesson - don’t use poetry or metaphors to express your self because they will inevitably be twisted to suit the corporate interests and not yours.

It's not so far from that to, "don't show your human side to the soulless corporation." And why even work for them, then?

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#124

Post by [deleted] »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #105

In my opinion, the work Ive did at Apple is greatly over rated. Yes it is clean and minimalist, and some devices like the iPhone 4 were truly innovative, bold and impressive designs. But overall, this is mostly bland, generic, boring. In the same minimalist style, I prefer the work of Dieter Rams. Some Sony products have really good design, including devices that were released a few years before the iPhone, but that…

[deleted]

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#125

Post by [deleted] »

dbspin wrote: post #100
lupire wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artists are a petty and vindictive culture, since value is subjective and there's no profit for being pretty good but not the annointed winner.

Genuine question, do you know any artists? This isn't the case generally; certainly amongst ordinary working visual artists - who are demonstrably open minded, centred, and interpersonally engaged. I can't speak to Damien Hirst level centimillionaires, who represent an invisibly small fraction of working artists.

[deleted]

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#126

Post by DrewADesign »

lupire wrote: post #68
arrrg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t quite get it. Firing that designer would not increase my trust in the design leadership. It would seem thin skinned, skittish, cruel, deeply immoral and evil, leading me to lose a lot of trust, feeling as though creating a culture of fear is the goal. That behavior seems completely incomprehensible to me, especially since you need to have an extremely tortured reading of that e-mail to read it as an atta…

Artists are a petty and vindictive culture, since value is subjective and there's no profit for being pretty good but not the annointed winner.

Vindictive? Artists? BS. You're clearly extrapolating on an unfounded assumption. I'm an adult art student getting a BFA as part of a career change and have known hundreds of artists and designers over the years. Firstly, there is no unifying culture among even large subsets of artists, let alone artists in general. Secondly, claiming that artists in general are vindictive is flat-out absurd.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#127

Post by foobiekr »

sangnoir wrote: post #114
gnicholas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the reason they sold insanely expensive Apple Watches is that they wanted to compete with luxury watches. Of course, the functionality is very different; the similarity is that both are methods of conspicuous consumption. I’m not an Apple Watch fan myself (still clutching my Pebble for dear life), but I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.

> I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience. I never could understand why Apple (or anyone else) this would be a possibility. Luxury watches are almost synonymous with heirloom; there is no way anyone will be wearing a functional Gold Apple watch in 2085 with the anecdote "This was my dad's watch" - it would be hopelessly outdated, and likely non-functional by then. This…

That heirloom stuff is purely marketing the fantasy of rich parents handing down a bauble (instead of, say, a business or real assets) aimed entirely at middle class and upper middle class people. It’s not real.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#128

Post by mathattack »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #9

That bit about the firing of the designer who used the river metaphor in that email is such a good lesson for anyone: Never ever ever ever announce moves like this if there is still money on the table that can still be taken away from you. No matter how awesome your company is, how great the team, product or how wonderful the atmosphere is. This guy thought he wrote a heartfelt goodbye to his beloved team and was ins…

Wait until the check clears if that much is at stake, especially if you don’t plan on showing up for work the last bit.

Re: The dissolution of Apple’s legacy design team

#129

Post by newsclues »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #105

In my opinion, the work Ive did at Apple is greatly over rated. Yes it is clean and minimalist, and some devices like the iPhone 4 were truly innovative, bold and impressive designs. But overall, this is mostly bland, generic, boring. In the same minimalist style, I prefer the work of Dieter Rams. Some Sony products have really good design, including devices that were released a few years before the iPhone, but that…

Sony worked with apple on early PowerBooks
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