In a recent conversation with the Document Journal, Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive and Dior Men’s new creative director Kim Jones, have predicted that our future will be “lighter and more dynamic, and yet more careful and considered”.
When it was announced last January that Jones would be the new creative director of Dior Men, menswear took on new trajectories, looking towards a “richness of form and spirit” never seen before. Meanwhile, for nearly 30 years, Ive has reordered our vision. His work is largely credited with cementing Apple’s aesthetic and reordering how we communicate, consume, and even see.
Below are a few interesting excerpts from the conversation:
Document—Technology and creativity are increasingly moving together at an ever-faster pace. How has it affected your work?
Kim—I mean, I graduated in 2002 and it was pre-social media. That all started around 2003 to 2004, maybe, when we were using MySpace—you know, the music channel?
Jony—It’s funny, isn’t it? Because I suppose that for everybody, technology is one of those words that’s so broad it means almost nothing.
Document—Can you each speak about the responsibility you feel as designers either in your work or to the world?
Jony—One of the most important things is where you say your responsibility is, chronologically. I don’t think it ends when you ship a product. If you make something new, and there are unforeseen consequences, you have a responsibility to respond to those.
Kim—I worked with Sorayama on Dior’s collections because he’s an artist in Japan that I admire very much. When I go to Japan, I feel like I’m in the future rather than actually looking toward the future. I care about the environment a lot, but I was just looking at an artist that I admire, who hadn’t been referenced, or hadn’t been referenced properly, and I just wanted to make that show as beautiful as possible.
Document—Could you both talk a bit about how you’re seeing materials differently and how you’re looking forward?
Kim—With Dior, I look at things in the archive that are relevant for now. I take those things and then I look at all of the latest in fabric technology, or pattern-making technology, and that’s what brings the newness to it.
Jony—We’re constantly either improving existing materials we use, like glass and aluminum, and then we’re developing new materials that might have a very specific application or that might have much broader applications. So much of our design starts with the material and trying to better understand the material.
You can read the entire conversation at this link.
