Appledesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group

by Paul Kunkel, Rick English (Photographer)

To celebrate Apple's twentieth anniversary, AppleDesign provides a rare inside look at the Industrial Design Group, examining the role this small team of creative individuals has played in the rise of Apple from a Silicon Valley garage to a billion-dollar corporation. It details the formation of the Group, outlines their method for turning great ideas into even greater products, reveals many design concepts and products that never reached the marketplace, and offers a glimpse at the triumph and turmoil than results when creative desire meets (and occasionally collides with) corporate reality.
With more than 400 color illustrations and detailed discussion of more than 100 products, design concepts and works-in-progress, AppleDesign provides the most thorough examination of a corporate design group ever published.
From the Macintosh to the PowerBook, the Newton MessagePad, the eMate and the just-released Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, Apple's designers have given us some of the most compelling and enduring products of our time. Their work not only enriches the lives of more than 50 million Apple users worldwide, it influences the computer industry at large, providing strong evidence for those who argue that industrial design is as powerful and relevant an art form as painting, sculpture or architecture.

Genres: Apple, Design, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

Reviews

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visually stunning and filled with fascinating backstories on the design of many of Apple's most popular products from the 80s and 90s. An absolute must for any longtime Apple fan, but it only gets four stars from me since it fits more into the "coffee table" book category (you enjoy looking through it once) than in the "reading" book category (things you read again and again).

[Elan Stouffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I grew up in the 90s around various Apple computers at home & in school, and I was always interested in consumer electronics in general. I was mesmerized by cool hardware design and eventually went into a design-adjacent field as an adult. I'm kind of shocked that notoriously secretive Apple gave access to to all the prototypes and concepts of their (previous) industrial design team.

My first "read" I was just focused on all the incredible images of the now retro-futuristic concepts. I love how they showed not only the final products that were actually released to the market, but more interestingly the prototypes & design studies that preceded them, the majority of which never made it to market.

Recently I came back to the book and read through the entirety of the text, and found the stories of each product equally fascinating, especially since I work in a related career path. So many great ideas were ultimately axed by post-Jobs leadership with poor understanding of the future trajectory of the market. No wonder the company wasn't doing so well until Steve returned.

I wish we could see all the concepts from the Ives era post-IDG, but with Apple's secrecy now I doubt we ever will. For an equally fascinating look into the pre-IDG era, check out Hartmut Esslinger's account of his time at Apple within "Keep it Simple: The Early Design Years of Apple".

[Nicola D'Agostino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recensito su Storie di Apple in "Apple Design – The Work of The Apple IDG".
p.s. Imperdibile (se riuscite a trovarlo).

[Dain Neater · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really much of a read, but lots of interesting pictures of Apple past.