Another Longtime Industrial Designer Leaves Apple

Apple is losing yet another longtime industrial design team members, reports Bloomberg. Bart Andre, who has been with Apple for over 30 years, is set to retire this year.

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Andre joined Apple in 1992 alongside Jony Ive, and he is one of the last remaining design team members that worked with Ive to establish the design aesthetic Apple was known for during Ive's tenure.

Andre has been helping run the design team following the 2022 departure of Evans Hankey, who served as Apple's vice president of industrial design after Ive left in 2019. When Ive quit Apple to start LoveFrom, several of the designers he had worked with went with him, and since then, other design team members have departed as well.

After Evans Hankey left, Apple eliminated the Product Design Chief role and restructured the product design team under operations chief Jeff Williams. According to Bloomberg, some of the people on the design team are unhappy with being led by an operations person instead of a designer, and cost cutting efforts have also changed the way the design team operates.

Apple now has only a handful of longtime designers that remain at the company.

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Top Rated Comments

WiiDSmoker Avatar
23 weeks ago
Marketing and bean counters lead Apple now
Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)
erikkfi Avatar
23 weeks ago
The design team reporting to an operations VP is a real concern. It's something specific that Steve Jobs cited as an issue with Apple under Sculley and Amelio. I can't deny that putting an operations person in charge of the company has worked out well for the company's value, but I wish Tim would give the design team more free rein to come up with products that truly inspire again.
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DelayedGratificationGene Avatar
23 weeks ago
Hey congratulations on your retirement and thank you for many years of dedicated service. Enjoy!
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DelayedGratificationGene Avatar
23 weeks ago

What a sad commentary on Cook. These folks were great when they had leadership. But under Cook, they just spiraled out of control.
What? The guy is retiring lol
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EmanuelF Avatar
23 weeks ago
Glad I discovered Apple during the designer era and not the marketing era.
All there's left of Apple is the designers soul and heritage.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nt5672 Avatar
23 weeks ago
What a sad commentary on Cook. These folks were great when they had leadership. But under Cook, they just spiraled out of control. The problem now is that there is still no design capability and no design leadership other than make it as small as possible, ignore functionality and flexibility. Design for mainstream teenagers and twenty-somethings that can be bought with marketing.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)