Apple's secretive industrial design lab shown off in redesigned jobs site
Jony Ive's design team has begun to emerge from the shadows, with some of Apple's elite cadre of designers featured on the company's revamped jobs microsite -- in a photo apparently taken within its top-secret industrial design lab.
The shot depicts four workers gathered around the edge of a large, Apple-store like wooden table discussing the clasp for an Apple Watch sport band. On the table are two long, thin boxes that appear to be prototypes of packaging for an Apple Watch or its replacement bands.
Behind the group stands a glass wall, which divides the workspace from a set of computerized milling machines.
This setup matches precisely with previous reports that describe the layout of Apple's industrial design lab, a space normally off-limits to all but those who work directly with Ive. At least two of the people in the photo also appear in a group picture taken of the industrial design team last September, following the unveiling of the Apple Watch.
The snapshot provides a rare glimpse inside Apple's holy of holies, a place that is rarely photographed or even visited. It last appeared on film in 2009, when Ive agreed to participate in industrial design documentary Objectified, but that scene took place entirely within a prototyping workshop.
Apple updated its jobs site earlier this week, bringing it in line with the new style of Apple.com.
The shot depicts four workers gathered around the edge of a large, Apple-store like wooden table discussing the clasp for an Apple Watch sport band. On the table are two long, thin boxes that appear to be prototypes of packaging for an Apple Watch or its replacement bands.
Behind the group stands a glass wall, which divides the workspace from a set of computerized milling machines.
This setup matches precisely with previous reports that describe the layout of Apple's industrial design lab, a space normally off-limits to all but those who work directly with Ive. At least two of the people in the photo also appear in a group picture taken of the industrial design team last September, following the unveiling of the Apple Watch.
The snapshot provides a rare glimpse inside Apple's holy of holies, a place that is rarely photographed or even visited. It last appeared on film in 2009, when Ive agreed to participate in industrial design documentary Objectified, but that scene took place entirely within a prototyping workshop.
Apple updated its jobs site earlier this week, bringing it in line with the new style of Apple.com.
Comments
Nice/interesting to see pen and paper still in heavy use. And the paper is not attached to a legal pad.
Or was this deliberately staged, to appeal to Potentials?
Not much to see there. Is that just a bunch of CNC milling machines in the background?
Behind the group stands a glass wall, which divides the workspace from a set of computerized milling machines.
serious amount of pencils!
Pencils are still the easiest design implement to design and edit with. It's a lot easier to draw something, especially ideas, by hand with a pencil than to "program" it on a computer.
Yeah. We need to see a photo of the ceiling.
Most likely.
And shot in front of some green screen in a photo studio in L.A. or New York, although the article does say that two of the pictured "models" were included in a earlier group shot of the Watch team.
No glare of photo lights reflecting off the glass walls to the "design center." The lighting is too perfect for the real world. Easiest way to generate this image would be to edit the people in.
Let me guess: the two WHITE MEN. Surely, the women must be models/aspiring actresses.
Let me guess: the two WHITE MEN. Surely, the women must be models/aspiring actresses.
I’m trying to tell if you’re being racist, sexist, ableist, mentally defective, or just telling a joke.
Absolutely. You could almost see that the people are "pasted" into the background. They would never be foolish enough to shoot this on the real location (Jony's lab). Not because that it is secretive, but shooting in studio is much easier. Just have a table, some pencils and papers and BAM!
Most likely.
And shot in front of some green screen in a photo studio in L.A. or New York, although the article does say that two of the pictured "models" were included in a earlier group shot of the Watch team.
No glare of photo lights reflecting off the glass walls to the "design center." The lighting is too perfect for the real world. Easiest way to generate this image would be to edit the people in.
Wrong. The easiest way is to hire a professional photographer. Have you ever worked with a green screen? Masking out all the hair and smoothing the path can take hours and it will still look fake under close scrutiny.
I'm voting for cynicism.
Wrong. The easiest way is to hire a professional photographer. Have you ever worked with a green screen? Masking out all the hair and smoothing the path can take hours and it will still look fake under close scrutiny.
Hollywood seems to use green screens on a regular basis and they shoot 60 frames a second (or more) for 120 minute films.
And wouldn't a professional photographer know how to use a green screen? I'm pretty confident that there are talented photographers in the greater SF Bay Area that can handle the task; Adobe Photoshop has been around for 25 years.
After all, it's not me that needs to take the picture, and Apple isn't going to ask some random schlub in marketing to grab his/her $200 digital camera and shoot this.
Yep. You'll never get a single strand of hair with a green screen.
Originally Posted by mpantone
And shot in front of some green screen in a photo studio in L.A. or New York, although the article does say that two of the pictured "models" were included in a earlier group shot of the Watch team.
No glare of photo lights reflecting off the glass walls to the "design center." The lighting is too perfect for the real world. Easiest way to generate this image would be to edit the people in.
The lighting's not very different from a well-designed product design lab space; even, without contrasty lighting and shadows.
"Editing the people in" would leave some telltale green or blue contamination around the edges of the people, and that doesn't appear in the picture (although compression artifacts are evident around high-contrast boundaries).
Another clue that it might be the real things is the mix of lighting evident; the background looks like it's lit by open sky, quite a bit more blue than the room lighting itself. Mixed lighting sources are generally a BadThing(tm) in studio shooting, you want to avoid it if at all possible because it can look very bad. At least they're not working under fluorescent tube lighting.