Jony Ive, the influential Apple designer who stepped down from the company in 2019, is helping foster a new generation of artistic and creative talent.

In 2017, Ive was appointed chancellor of the Royal College of Art (RCA), a prestigious London institution for art and design whose alumni includes the painter David Hockney, architect Thomas Heatherwick, and designer and engineer James Dyson.

Ive has been a huge influence on everyday technology, having designed the iPhone, iPod, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch, and left Apple last year to pursue his own projects.

This week, the RCA launched its 2020 graduate show online for the first time thanks to disruption by the pandemic — including a collection curated by the former Apple designer. For more, read the full Business Insider report.

Jony Ive's famous introductory product videos for Apple were one of the best highlights of any product keynote. The videos were highly polished and you don't realize just how polished they were until you see Ive's promotion of this week's graduate show as presented below.

Without high-end editing to get every word and emotion just right, Ive is seen in his RCA video to almost be clumsy in his message's execution – though still classic Ive. With that said, enjoy Ive's message. 

Optimistic, Singular and New

This week's message from Jony Ive

"This collection, drawn from schools across the college, is an impossibly small selection from an extraordinary body of work.

Making any sort of choice is of course absurdly challenging, but viewing the work was so very joyful, exhilarating and an overwhelming privilege. The work is so very good. It is optimistic, singular and new. There is a clarity and boldness that perhaps speaks to the absence of familiar tools or the usual distractions.

To reconsider fundamental approaches to their work at a time of complete chaos and uncertainty demonstrates a remarkable drive and resolve and is ultimately a victory for creativity in its many areas of practice. This is a particular body of work that I believe will be regarded as significant in the future.

I do encourage you to spend time taking a good look and join me celebrating this year’s wonderfully inspiring graduates. What a year."

(Signed) 

Jony Ive

You could review the full collection of work from Ive's curated artists here. Below are just a few of the standouts.

Ping Mu's Cyberspace Odyssey

The Refectory: An Urban Monastery

Blanca Rivera Fernandez's 'Dedalyx'

(Click on image to enlarge: It's a must in order to see the imagined electronics integrated into the thimbles)

Healthcare designer Blanca Rivera Fernandez conceived skin-like thimbles to be worn on the fingers. The idea is that surgeons wear the device, allow their movements to be monitored, and trainees can then learn from them.

"By using the thimbles, the trainee can mimic the surgeon's hands movements unlimited times while receiving real-time feedback," she says. "This fact allows the user to know where and how to improve the movements to avoid tissue damage, for instance."

Apple Patent: Art meets Engineering Vision

In a way the art above from Fernandez reminds me of Apple's invention that we reported  on back in May that that includes mention of  advanced thimbles for VR environments. A collection of the patent figures from that patent are presented below that illustrates a thimble-like accessory. So art is reflecting what engineers, especially Apple engineers, have envisioned as future tools working or playing VR environments that could include training scenarios. 

In the end it was nice to see Jony Ive again in an environment closer to his heart.

In RCA's Curator Biography it's noted that Jony Ive "holds over 5000 patents, with his work earning many plaudits, including, amongst others, Honorary Doctorates from the Royal College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Northumbria University and both Cambridge and Oxford Universities."