Jony Ive Shares His Must-Have Design Tools and More in Curated Series [LIST]

Image: Apple

Apple’s former chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive, recently listed down his 12 must-have design tools and instruments for making, marking, measuring, and simply carrying on his person every day, and detailed the list with The Financial Times.

Jony Ive’s list of top design tools includes:

  1. Torque wrench Snap-On adjustable torque wrench, £455
  2. Tonearm — Linn titanium Ekos SE tonearm, $5,645 USD, from basilaudio.com
  3. Hex Keys Wiha colour-coded hex L-Key set, starts from $3.69 USD
  4. Paper folder — Paper folder, from hwebber.co.uk
  5. Measuring Tape Hermès leather In The Pocket measuring tape, $530 USD
  6. Loupe — Vintage brass folding magnifier by Leitz Wetzlar, from Ive’s personal collection
  7. Fountain pen — Vintage pen by Montegrappa, from Ive’s personal collection
  8. Eraser — Graf Von Faber-Castell platinum-plated eraser, £100, from jacksonsart.com
  9. Pencil case — Vintage leather pouch by Visvim, from Ive’s personal collection
  10. Protractor Mitutoyo 6in universal bevel protractor, £264
  11. Depth gauge — Starrett 440Z-3RL depth micrometer, $355 USD
  12. Weather station Wempe Navigator II ship’s clock and weather station, $1,960 USD

The list was part of a guest edit by Ive on the Financial Times, part of the latter’s latest ‘Makers and creators’ issue, focusing on the “craft of the hand”. Ive talks about musicians, the noble metal of silver, plus more about his design firm LoveFrom with Mark Newson.

“This issue is about making. Long an obsession of mine, it has always struck me that the process of creating and making finds expression in so many different forms. The things we make can be tangible and somewhat permanent, like buildings or products or paintings, or like the silver coffee pot my father made. Or they can be as exquisitely temporal as an arrangement of flowers, or food or music,” explained Ive.

Since departing from Apple, Jony Ive has gone on to establish ‘LoveFrom,’ his own design firm. In May 2021, Apple confirmed that Ive helped design last year’s M1-powered 24-inch iMac, despite having left the company back in 2019.

After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, a book from The Wall Street Journal‘s Tripp Mickle that went on sale earlier this week on May 3, details what drove Jony Ive to exit Apple in 2019, among other things.

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