Tom Karen talked Jonathan Ive out of quitting with Uni pep talk
Raleigh Chopper designer Tom Karen has recalled the time he talked aspiring industrial designer Sir Jonathan Ive out of quitting his undergraduate course during a timely pep talk at Newcastle University.
Karen believes his intervention saved the budding Apple designers career with a few choice words of encouragement which persuaded Ive to continue down his adoptive path, one which would ultimately lead to the iPhone and a knighthood.
Karen was responsible for a number of seventies classics such as Bond Bug and Marble Run, making him the ideal figure to inspire a young Ive during the mid-eighties when his concerned father gave him a bell.
Speaking to The Telegraph Karen said: “I worked with his father [a silversmith who became a design technology teacher and later a schools inspector] on the panel of a design competition for students.
“He got in touch with me a bit later and said, my son Jonathan’s at university in Newcastle and is thinking about giving up his industrial design course. Maybe you could revive his interest?
“I showed them around, and the outcome was that Jonathan stuck to industrial design and made a huge success of it.”
Ive is now regarded as the most influential person in his field today.