Apple's longtime head of design Jony Ive left the company back in mid-2019 to start his own company called LoveFrom, and one of Ive's first clients is Airbnb.
Airbnb today announced that it is working with Ive's LoveFrom company on a "special collaboration" that will include a multi-year relationship to "design the next generation of Airbnb products and services."
Today, I'm thrilled to announce that Jony and his partners at LoveFrom will be engaging in a special collaboration with me and the Airbnb team. We have made the decision to work together through a multi-year relationship to design the next generation of Airbnb products and services. Jony will also help us continue to develop our internal design team, which he believes to be one of the world's best. I know he is particularly excited about a relationship that will evolve to become a deep collaboration with our creative team.
I hope all of this speaks to the seriousness of our design-driven approach. We believe that working together will be an important and powerful creative partnership. We're both excited about the ideas we already have, as well as ideas that are currently beyond our imagination.
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky says that he has long admired Ive's work, and that he and Ive have been friends for "many years," sharing a belief in the "value and importance of creativity and design."
When Jony Ive left Apple, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Cupertino company would continue to work with Ive's LoveFrom, with Apple serving as one of LoveFrom's "primary clients." At the time, Ive said that he was looking forward to working with Apple "for many years to come" and remaining "very involved."
Ive's company, LoveFrom, was created in partnership with Marc Newson, who Ive has worked with for many years. LoveFrom is a collective of designers, architects, engineers, artists, writers, and musicians.
When Ive left, his design duties were taken over by Evans Hankey and Alan Dye, who head up Industrial Design and Human Interface Design, respectively. Both report to Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer.
