I am an engineer and as such I am a bit of a geek. I like techy things. I like to wonder at how innovation evolves in whatever field of study. Those moments where you see something that truly makes you think ‘How did they do that’? are the very best for me. It is this curiosity that has made me the engineer I am, the pursuit of function through elegant detailing. It matters a lot in building glass design as it is the details you see more than the glass itself.
I see the importance of the iPhone in many different ways. It’s obvious revolutionary effect in bringing the information we now have access to right in to our hands, what it represents as good design and what it represents as continued innovations.
The smart phone has changed our lives and the iPhone led that change fifteen years ago. It meant that we began to shift how we communicate; it led the change from more formal email as an extension of letter writing to notes in the form of texts and instant messaging. It brought us together, allowing us to follow our friends and relatives around the world with ease through applications such as Facebook etc. For me, the fact that it allows the freedom of movement and location while being able to manage communication has been led to more freedom, which blurs those historic boundaries of the workplace.
As an object the iPhone represents the very best in design. The minimal nature of the casing that does not fuss, but manages to beautifully house the depth and breadth of technology. The attention to the detail of each sinuous Bézier curve or the junction between the ultra-thin glass screen and the surrounding case, a few of those examples of virtual design perfection through doubtless thousands of iterations.
Innovation is a best served continuously, it doesn’t happen once, it is an evolution of ideas and studies. I love the fact that the object we hold in our hand does not change dramatically each time a new one is launched – it evolves representing the latest that technology can achieve in a small gadget while housing it in materials that likewise evolve or adapt to the demands of how we use the device.