Airbnb hires Jony Ive to design next-gen products and services

Online vacation rental giant Airbnb on Wednesday said it has hired former Apple CDO Jony Ive and his company LoveFrom to assist in the design of future products and services.

Announced in a blog post from Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, Ive will work on next-generation "products and services" as a design consultant. It appears that he will report directly to Chesky, or collaborate on design initiatives with the CEO, throughout what is described as a "multi-year relationship."

"Jony will also help us continue to develop our internal design team, which he believes to be one of the world's best," Chesky writes. "I know he is particularly excited about a relationship that will evolve to become a deep collaboration with our creative team."

As noted by The Information, Ive and Chesky have known each other for years. Ive helped flesh out Airbnb's logo in 2014, while Chesky wrote Ive's biography for Time magazine's top 100 most influential people in 2015.

Airbnb on Wednesday told employees that its chief design officer, Alex Schleifer, would step down to a part-time role, The Information reports. Schleifer led the company's design team for six years.

Today's news comes ahead of Airbnb's initial public offering, which is currently targeted for December.

After nearly three decades at Apple, Ive departed the company in 2019 to set up independent design consultancy LoveFrom. Ive played a critical roll in shaping Apple's famed design language during his long tenure at the company. His fingerprints are on everything from iPhone to Apple Park in Cupertino.

41 Comments

hammeroftruth 1354 comments · 16 Years

About 4 years ago

Some Ive designed comment cards or water bottles would be nice.

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

Ive was the one who tended to get the credit, but Jobs was the one making all the decisions on design. Jony would follow directions to an excruciating degree, which is what Steve loved about him. If he wants to waste his time on Airbnb trash, good riddance.

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

Funny a few days ago I was scouring the internet trying to find what LoveFrom was working on and nothing came up.

I'm betting he will refuse to work on tech that competes with Apple.

sflocal 6133 comments · 16 Years

SpamSandwich said:

Ive was the one who tended to get the credit, but Jobs was the one making all the decisions on design. Good riddance.

Jobs decided what design of Ive's made the cut. If Jobs didn't like a design, Ive would redesign it to facilitate the change. Nothing wrong with that. Not sure why the hate.

cornchip 1943 comments · 11 Years

sflocal said:

SpamSandwich said:

Ive was the one who tended to get the credit, but Jobs was the one making all the decisions on design. Good riddance.

Jobs decided what design of Ive's made the cut. If Jobs didn't like a design, Ive would redesign it to facilitate the change. Nothing wrong with that. Not sure why the hate.

Exactly. Design isn’t one way. It’s a back and forth. It’s twisted around and shaped to perfection over time with many, many people involved. To think it was one guy saying “do it this way!” and then out it popped, is pretty out of touch.