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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

The reactions in this thread are comical. This is Jony Ive for god’s sake. The way to think about this is: this is the website you can have when you’re Jony Ive.

It doesn’t need a contact form: he doesn’t need random queries from the internet.

It doesn’t need SEO: he’s Jony Ive.

It doesn’t need a portfolio page: he’s Jony Ive. And so on.

Criticizing this website makes as much sense as criticizing Steve Jobs’s business card. “Your business card sucks. It doesn’t even have your phone number on it! Let me instruct you on how to design a proper business card…”

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Jony Ive’s site can just display a single poop emoji and he could probably still get away with it.

I think most would hire a software engineer with a poop emoji website, just because you can get away with it doesn't mean that it helps your career or is good to put out there. All this does is show that he wants to be treated like a diva, which is totally fine, but a lot of people will get put off by that (which I guess is the point).

He doesn't need to worry if this helps his career or not.

People who may want to hire him won't put off by this.

It is pointless to try to generalize this website to any other context.

Exactly. The fact that no one here has to ask "Who is Jony Ive" says it all

I have no idea who Jony Ive is. The website is next to unreadable for me.

If you don't know who Jony Ive is, you have no possible business with him.

Even if I did know Jony Ive, I would probably still have no business with him. His site is a mess.

> If you don't know who Jony Ive is, you have no possible business with him.

Pretty sure there are plenty of CEO's out there who don't know who he is and could potentially be interested in his services. Just because you aren't aware of the designer world doesn't mean that you wouldn't pay for a top designer, and this website means the CEO would look for another agency.

If a CEO is in a position where they could hire Jony Ive but don't know Jony Ive, the CEO probably has someone working for them who knows who Jony Ive is and can pitch him internally.

Then you are not the intended audience.

Who is, though? It seems the designers don't even know.

oh please, you can stop now. we get it.

why make a website in the first place then ? Isn't the goal of good design to remove everything that's unnecessary ?

Then to produce good design means becoming a monk.

How do you decide what’s unnecessary and what’s not? It would depend entirely of what you want to communicate, and to whom.

We don’t know what Jony Ive intended with this website, but the fact that so many here are criticising it makes me quite certain that we are not the target audience.

You're confusing the technical design of the website with the design and execution of the concept. The goal here is not to minimize LOC but to communicate intent and aesthetic.

The concept is extremely minimalist - simple black text on a white background, with a little animation. The complexity of scaffolding is irrelevant.

i wasn't talking about code, but design principles that apply to pretty anything humans are building.

People here say "he doesn't need things we usually expect from a website, like contact form or anything, because he's johny ives"

But then why make a website in the first place ?

I would trust Jony Ive to be a better judge of the design principles behind the site than Hacker News. I'm confident it's speaking to its intended audience.

As far as why, who knows? Maybe it's a placeholder and other content is forthcoming. Maybe it's just a fun typographic novelty flier. Maybe it's just marketing. It's not a startup, he doesn't have to gauge market receptivity or convert leads.

There is no reason for him to have a website other than as a vanity project. Why there is no urgent plea to save the turtles remains a mystery.

He definitely doesn't need all that Javascript ;)

He doesn't even need a website.

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