Jony Ive – the designer known for the iPhone and Mac’s iconic look, and not to be confused with Short Circuit’s Johnny Five – parted company with Apple back in 2019. And while his new company – LoveFrom – worked with Apple for a while, the two ended their partnership pretty abruptly last year.
So while Apple’s been noodling away with more iPhones, iPads and Macs, what exactly has Ive been up to? Well, his most recent development is to redesign the Red Nose.
No, that’s not a codename for an unreleased smartphone, and while it’s technically in the wearables category, it doesn’t do much but promote a good cause.
Working with the British charity Comic Relief, Ive has redesigned the iconic Red Nose to be more compact and environmentally friendly than the plastic and rubber abominations that have come before it. There’s even a handy case to carry it around in, should you become unnervingly attached to your paper proboscis.
Built from plant-based materials, the Red Nose unfolds from a C shape like a fan, with a paper honeycomb sphere emerging when you pull it apart from the sides. “This new and seemingly simple Red Nose has been a fabulously complex little object to design and make and has involved our entire team,” said Ive, perhaps indicating that refining iPhones year-on-year wasn’t exactly stretching his design muscles. “We hope it brings a little moment of joy to everyone who wears one.”
Available for £2.50 (or around NZ$4.78), the charity is somewhat optimistically limiting noses to eight per order. Though of course people don’t buy the Red Nose for style points, but for the money sales generate battling things like homelessness, mental health and food insecurity.
Beyond building Red Noses, LoveFrom has worked with AirBnb and has apparently entered into a high-profile contract with Ferrari. The fruits of this partnership will no doubt make buying eight Red Noses seem a comparitive bargain for those keen on getting their hands on some Ive-designed products.
