Jony Ive interview: The story of the Apple Pencil

Exclusive interview: Sir Jonathan Ive tells Rhiannon Williams how the Apple Pencil came to be, and why old habits shouldn’t always die hard

Apple's chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive
Apple's chief design officer, Sir Jonathan Ive

Reinventing an object billions of people across the world know and use every day is no mean feat. The humble pencil has been around for thousands of years, with its origins in the discovery of graphite deposits in Borrowdale in Cumberland circa 1564.

The 19th century’s industrial revolution witnessed the foundation of some of the world’s best-known pencil companies, including Faber-Castell and Steadtler, helping people to express their innermost thoughts on paper. Then again, if anyone is qualified to reimagine the ways in which we communicate, it’s Jony Ive.

Widely known as the British design mastermind behind Apple’s most famous products including the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Ive and his secretive team of designers hidden away in Apple’s Californian headquarters have created the company’s first tablet stylus, the Apple Pencil. It’s a companion accessory to the supersized iPad Pro, a giant 12.9-inch iPad which goes on sale this week, following its grand unveiling alongside the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus back in September.

The Pencil has been designed to replicate the tactile experience of using a pen or pencil as naturally and accurately as possible, albeit with a plethora of artistic implements, from paintbrush and airbrush to felt tip or fountain pen depending on which app you’re using to squiggle on the iPad’s screen.

The decision to name the stylus Apple Pencil, Ive says, is clearly an acknowledgement of how objects and instruments have grown and evolved over hundreds of years. One of the key challenges was designing something in the form of a traditional writing instrument for use in iOS, Apple’s iPad and iPhone operating system largely designed for fingers, not fine points.

“We hoped if you are used to spending a lot of time using paintbrushes, pencils and pens, this will feel like a more natural extension of that experience - that it will feel familiar,” he says, carefully. “To achieve that degree of very simple, natural behaviour, was a significant technological challenge.”

The term natural is a recurrent theme for Apple's recently promoted chief design officer, who shoulders the burden of bridging the tangible and familiar with pushing the boundaries of what is possible through persistent technological innovation. Born in Chingford, London in 1967, he went on to study Industrial Design at Newcastle Polytechnic, now Northumbria University.

He has previously spoken of how upon stumbling across an Apple Mac computer towards the end of his student days, he was struck by an overwhelming sense of their design values in a way he never had before. Aged 21, he jumped on a plane for the first time and made his way to California. Ive joined Apple full time in 1992, and despite being based in San Francisco ever since, retains his British accent. There he worked closely with late chief executive Steve Jobs to hone the pared-back, sleek aesthetic now synonymous with Apple products.

The Pencil is no exception - a delicate white plastic device with a removable rubber sensor-filled tip for detecting the amount of pressure you’re applying to the screen and varying the weight of the line it draws accordingly, including a bold, hard mark when pressing hard on the direct tip, and a faint, fanned effect when brushed on its side, just as a physical pencil would.

The Apple Pencil, drawn with the Apple Pencil in SketchBook

Ive hopes those using the Pencil for the first time are surprised by this, as “every other stylus you’ve used is a pretty poor representation of the analogue world”. But he still envisages a future when the Pencil will exist very happily next to real paper and an HB pencil.

The Apple Pencil is equipped with sensors to detect how hard you're pressing on the iPad's surface

“Many of us in the design team have worked together for 20 plus years. We’ve always drawn in our sketchbooks, and for the first time - despite flirting with some alternatives a couple of years ago - I’m seeing people starting to use the iPad and Apple Pencil. Our personal experience has been that there are definitely affordances and opportunities now that you have a much more natural and intuitive environment to make marks, there are clearly things you can do sketching and writing on the iPad which you could never dream of doing in the analogue world."

 

The stark divisions of the digital and analogue worlds appear to occupy Ive. After all, he points out, plugging the Pencil into the iPad to charge it is hardly a natural and intuitive thing to do. "If somebody points that out it’s hardly a moment of considerable epiphany for us!" he laughs. "We don’t like to have to charge multiple devices and manage them either so one of the things we’ve worked extremely hard on is the actual process of charging."

Ive is a quiet and considered man who thinks very carefully before speaking. When talking, you feel he is mentally weighing the value of every word; its significance, its implication. It’s probably this perfectionism and willingness to strip a process back to its bare bones to examine its fundamental components that sets Apple’s electronics apart from its competition, a blend of ergonomics and good old-fashioned problem solving.

“What I think is remarkable is the force of habit, and the fact that while we can have a practice for doing something that has been repetitive and established over many, many years, it doesn’t actually mean there’s any virtue to doing it that way at all,” he ponders.

He grows genuinely excited when he learns I’ve been testing the Pencil for the past few weeks, and implores me to keep on using it to get the most out of it, as his 11-year old sons have.

“I always like when you start to use something with a little less reverence. You start to use it a little carelessly, and with a little less thought, because then, I think, you’re using it very naturally. What I’ve enjoyed is when I’m just thinking, holding the Pencil as I would my pen with a sketchpad and I just start drawing,” he enthuses.

“When you start to realise you’re doing that without great intent and you’re just using it for the tool that it is, you realise that you’ve crossed over from demoing it and you’re actually starting to use it. As you cross that line, that’s when it actually feels the most powerful.”

Ive wants customers to use the Apple Pencil as they would an artistic instrument in what he calls the analogue world

I can't imagine Sir Jony using anything carelessly, let alone flinging the Pencil about with reckless abandon. Ive’s seeming patience in the face of such rapid technological innovation seems remarkable and almost charming, especially given the legions of beady-eyed analysts waiting for Apple’s tech bubble to burst. In an age when other companies are bending over backwards to reinvent the wheel, Jony Ive has reinvented the pencil.