The British Design & Art Direction (D&AD) awards are the most prestigious awards in the industry — the Oscars of the design world. Jony Ive has a record number of D&AD awards. He has six Black Pencils — the highest, which range from Yellow Pencils to Black. This is more than anyone else, ever; and he got them in a stretch of just 10 years. One Yellow Pencil makes a career; Black Pencils are much rarer, a sign of genius.
In 2011, for the first time ever, Apple flew the entire industrial design team to London to pick up an award for the Best Design Studio of the Last 50 Years. It was one of the first public recognitions for the group as a whole, and they felt it was important enough to fly the extremely reclusive, ultra secretive group en masse from California to receive it.
But none of the designers are named individually on the award. And even though they all had their picture taken at the ceremony, Apple’s handlers gave very strict orders that the photographers did not list their names. “They were very specific about not publishing everyone’s names after the pic was taken,” said the photographer of the picture above, Noah Da Costa.
To the public, they are anonymous. Here’s who they are (in alphabetical order):
Jody Akana
Credit: Facebook
Jody Akana keeps a very, very low profile. Unlike other members of the team, she appears to have no LinkedIn account or personal website. Searches reveal no previous employment history or education background. However, she appears to be a Hawaiian native in her mid-thirties. She joined the design team in the late 2000s, and is credited as the engineering program manager for the iPad. She’s named on about 200 patents, most of them for the iPhone and iPad, including their packaging and accessories like docking stations.
Bartley “Bart” Andre
Recruited to Apple in 1992, Bart Andre is a graduate of the University of California at Long Beach. He was working as an intern in Apple’s Personal Intelligent Electronics, or PIE group, when he became friendly with the design team and was recruited into their ranks. He has emerged as one of the top five patent holders in the United States on a year-to-year basis (thanks to his last name, he is listed on all of Apple’s major patents in the title: “United States Patent Application Andre et. al.”). By 2013, Andre had more patents to his name than any other Apple designer including Jony Ive. In 2009 alone, he received 92 patents; in 2010, his 114 set a record for an Apple designer. Most of the patent awards were for innovations on the iPhone, iPad and MacBook lines.
Shota Aoyagi
Shota Aoyagi also graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, where he gained notice for clever drip-proof pouring devices. Inspired by the way water runs off a roof, his Roofers are special lids for jugs, thermos and teapots that channels liquid flow under the the lip of the lid, eliminating drips. Having graduated in 2011, Aoyagi is a recent addition to the team, and curiously seems to be interested in designing unusual clothing. With a partner, Junguen Lee, Aoyagi wrapped synthetic fibers around molds to create unusual, sculptural garments. See below for other recent additions tot he design team with expertise in clothing and fabrics.
Jeremy Bataillou
A native of France, Bataillou graduated from Paris’ École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in 2005 with a Diploma in Industrial Design. He joined the team around 2006 just before the launch of the first iPhone. According to his Bataillou worked on iPhone, iPad, MacBook, EarPods and iMac, and a lot of accessories. Including smart cover Shares patents for docks, packaging, about 96 patents.
Daniel Coster
Daniel J. Coster joined the team after Jony Ive, arriving in June 1994. Described as “tall, goofy [and], super-talented,” Coster had earned a degree in Industrial Design from the Wellington Polytechnic school in New Zealand in 1986. Initially hired on a three-month contract, he impressed the group with work on colors and finishes for the Newton MessagePad, then was hired full time. He designed various tower computers and gained notice for being the lead designer of the Bondi Blue iMac. Like his coworkers, Coster has rapidly accumulated patents, receiving nearly six hundred working for Apple over the last two decades. He shares patents for iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac and dozens of other products. In 2012, Coster was inducted into his alma mater’s design Hall of Fame for “an outstanding contribution to New Zealand’s economy, reputation and national identity through art and design.”
Daniele de Iuliis
Daniele de Iuliis
Daniele De Iuliis (pronounced day-YOU-lease) was born in Bristol, United Kingdom, of Italian descent. He is a graduate of the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London and was hired by in 1991 from the San Francisco office of design group ID Two. He preceded Jony Ive joining the group by a year. One of his early projects was the Macintosh Color Classic, an update of the original Mac that exuded character and was avidly collected by fans for years. He would later work on the MacBook Pro and the iPhones 4 and 5. His name appears on more than 560 patents. They’re vast and varied in scope, including innovations in 3-D cameras, multi-touch displays, location tracking, RFID transponders, nitriding stainless steel, Magsafe charging mechanisms, the iPod and improved speaker enclosures. He has a strong relationship with Jony Ive and has commuted with him from San Francisco for more than twenty years. They were both almost killed in a car accident coming home from Apple.
Caption – Daniele de Iuliis — is to the left in the picture above, taken at the San Francisco Apple Store during the iPhone launch (Danny Coster is to the right). Credit: AP
Evans Hankey
Evans Hankey also keeps a very low-profile. In fact, an extremely low profile. Listed on hundreds of patents as either Evans Hankey or M. Evans Hankey, he/she may or may not be a “Martha” Hankey, name that shows up in various public record searches. By a process of elimination, this would be the only woman on the team, shown sixth from the left. This is pure guesswork, however. M. Evans Hankey is listed on more than 300 patents.
Source: Evans Hankey is the ID CAD team manager. She was a rock-star PD engineer, and she took over the ID CAD group after Cal Seid died in 2007.
Julian Hönig
Julian Hönig is a native of Austria and a former car designer who has worked with Lamborghini and Audi. He was previously a senior designer at the Lamborghini Center in Italy and joined Apple’s ID team in 2010. He undertook a scholarship at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, a famous auto-design school. According to his blog, he’s involved with a couple of San Francisco art galleries and runs a surfboard business on the side, Awesome Surfboards.
Richard Howarth
Richard Paul Howarth was born in Lukasa, Zambia, and graduated from Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in London in 1993. He was recruited by Apple in 1996 from IDEO and became one the group’s main designers. Howarth was the lead designer of the original iPhone, and a major contributor to the iPad. He’s regarded as one of the best artists of the group, and is co-named on about 2,000 patents.
Jonathan Ive
The boss. Here he is relaxing at the pub with
Born in 1967 in Chingford, Essex, and trained at Northumbria Universtiy, Jony Ive was recruited to Apple in 1992. Within just a few years, thanks to his diligence and talent, he was appointed head of the studio. He struck up a close relationship with Steve Jobs when Apple’s co-founder returned to turn the company around. In the following dozen years they helped turn Apple into one of the world’s biggest, most profitable and powerful companies. He leads the design studio arbitrates every design decision. Under his leadership, industrial design has become the inventive brain of Apple, pioneering most of the company’s innovation.
Duncan Kerr
Another designer from the United Kingdom, Duncan Kerr graduated from the Imperial College London in 1985 with a degree in mechanical engineering and a degree in ID engineering from the Royal College of Art. He was also recruited from IDEO. As one of the team’s more technical members, Kerr has great influence in the development and investigations of new products and technologies. He helped pioneer the multi-touch technology that led to the iPhone and iPad. He has been named in numerous patents, including various technical innovations involving components like proximity detectors, display modules and magnetic connectors.
Shin Nishibori
In his late 40s, Shin Nishibori was a noted designer in his native Japan before he was recruited to be a member of Apple’s ID team in the late 2002. Nishibori has been involved in almost every one of Apple’s major product designs since that time. There are scant clues to his specific contributions, beyond mention in scores of patents for products ranging from MacBooks to the iPhone. Nishibori left Apple in July 2010 and now runs a cafe and shop in Tokyo. He appears to spend a lot of time in Hawaii, according to his social network posts. He was requested by Samsung to testify during the Apple/Samsung trial but complained of ill health and didn’t take the stand. Samsung presumably wanted to Nishibori to address a “Sony-style” concept for the iPhone he’d made at Jony Ive’s request during the development process. Samsung had hoped to prove that Apple had copied Sony to make the iPhone.
Matthew Dean Rohrbach
Matthew Dean Rohrbach is another of the designers with a very low profile. So low, I couldn’t find any information about him at all — and can’t be sure which one he is in the D&AD award photo, or if he’s even in it. Nonetheless, Rohrbach has been a member of the team since at least 2000 and is named on more than 500 patents.
Peter Russell-Clarke
Like several others on the team, Peter Russell-Clarke is a graduate of London’s prestigious Royal College of Art, one of the UK’s top design schools. Before joining Apple, Russell-Clarke co-founded Stromatolite, a London design lab. He is already named on almost 300 patents dating back to just 2010. Peter Russell-Clarke appears to be related to an Australian TV chef of the same name.
Douglas Satzger
Doug Satzger is another IDEO alumnus. Satzger attended the University of Cincinnati and graduated in 1985. He started his career at IDEO as an industrial design lead, before moving to design TVs at Thomson Consumer Electronics. He would work at Apple between 1996 and 2008 in the IDg. An Ohio native, his interest in materials and knowledge of manufacturing processes made him the group’s design lead for color, materials and finishes, working on the first iMac to the latest iPhone, iPods, iPad and MacBooks. Satzger has been named in many patents, mostly in electronic devices, displays, cursor controls, packaging and connectors. After Apple, Satzger joined HP/Palm as the senior director of ID then moved to Intel, where he’s vice president of the Mobile and Communications Group and general manager of ID.
Chris Stringer
Christopher Stringer, born in Australia in 1965, was raised in the North of England. He attended North Staffordshire Polytechnic in Stoke-on-Trent and graduated from London’s Royal College of Art in 1986. A veteran of IDEO—hired in 1992, he helped develop Dell’s design language and won an ID Design Review Award for an innovative light switch—he was recruited by Jony in 1995 as a senior industrial designer. Stringer has been involved in all Apple’s major products (including the iPhone), peripherals and in even smaller projects, like the design of product packaging. He was also the first designer to give testimony at the Apple v. Samsung trial, where, according to Reuters news service, “Stringer looked every inch the designer with his shoulder-length hair, salt-and-pepper beard, wearing an off-white suit with a narrow black tie.” Stringer was often seen at Apple launch events talking side by side with Jony. The impression they are close friends is enhanced by their shared history; both hail from Staffordshire and studied in the North of England.
Mikael Silvanto
A native of Norway, Mikael Silvanto also graduated from London’s Royal College of Art, according to his LinkedIn profile. He worked for an engineering company associated with Feedship, the company that built Steve Jobs boat. He was recruited to Apple in October 2011. Among other things, he helped create a clever speaker that changes function according to its orientation. Equipped with a motion sensor, the speaker can be assigned to a different Dolby Surround channel depending on its orientation.
Eugene Whang
One of Eugene Whang’s online profiles claims he was born and raised in an Igloo, but has lived in California since 1999. Whang is one of Apple’s main designers, co-named on nearly 600 patents including the key patents of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. He a music fan and has been spotted at Coachella and other events. He writes about art and music, and runs a record label in San Francisco, which hosts regular DJ nights at a local nightclub.
Rico Zorkendorfer
Rico Zorkendorfer is another graduate from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and a recruit from IDEO. He has been a member of the design team since the mid 2000s and is named on more than 500 patents, including the iPhone’s TouchID fingerprint sensor.
Recent Recruits
Daniel Spence
Another recent hire is Dan Spence, a specialist in welding and fine art who hails from Los Angeles. He joined the Industrial Design group in April 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile. Apple recently added friction stir welding to its manufacturing arsenal, although it’s not clear if Spence is involved in that effort.
Billy Smith
Hired in July 2012, Billy Smith was a top wetsuit designer at Patagonia. A keen surfer, Smith is also part owner of Sporting Sails, which makes special sails for skateboarders to help control fast downhill descents.
Ben Shaffer
Another intriguing recent addition to the IDg team is Nike Shoe designer Ben Shaffer. The former studio director of Nike’s Innovation Kitchen, an in-house innovation lab, Shaffer is an expert in cutting-edge knitting technology. He is credited with pioneering Nike’s FlyKnit shoes, a line of ultra-light athletic shoes that are made by knitting yarns with different tensile strengths into a strong but lightweight upper.