Apple
Desktop, Mobile and Web Design and Human Interface Guidelines
Between 2001 and 2011, I was part of the tight-knit design leadership team that introduced the world to Apple’s most iconic lifestyle products. Here is the great work we did.
What People Are Saying
“Abi’s at the intersection of design, tech, world change, and massive innovation.”
— Dan Walker, Chief Talent Officer, Apple
“Abigail Brody is the best and that’s all there is to say about that.”
— Jesse Dylan, Wondros
“I worked with Abi at Apple. Her work set a gold standard for refinement and simplicity.”
— Charles Migos (ex Apple)
My decade at Apple
All we did at Apple was caring about all the details with an obsession that has been unparalleled in the world of design. Steve Jobs grew up with a father teaching his son about craftsmanship so passionate that one cares about the inside and behind a piece of furniture, and not just care about the veneer in front. We were expected to deliver that kind of craftsmanship and quality, even in places where no one ‘was expected to be looking.
I joined Apple in 2001 as one the company’s first product design leads ever to head up the company’s brand-new applications division.
During my role as product design lead, hiring manager and creative director of Apple’s applications division, my role was to oversee Apple’s entire professional photo, video, and audio design ecosystem and create and lead the ProKit design charter. This effort led not only to the creation of a comprehensive design language for Apple’s award-winning professional applications, but also to the charter of incremental ‘cross-pollination’ between divisions affecting the redesign and evolution of the look & feel of both Apple’s macOS X and iOS, in particular Apple’s dark mode, when it was introduced to a larger audience in 2019/20 with iOS 13 .4.1. A look that’s being highly appreciated by both the design and engineering community, especially as of recently, in 2020. Also available to the developer community at large via the Apple developer platform and the Apple HIG (link). For professional users and customers, it was essential that their visual interface and system needed to intuitively by maximizing content, such as video clips or visualized sound waves, and our GUI had to work well for novices, intermediate users as well as professional that were highly experienced. I made sure that we take our responsibility towards both Apple and the customer seriously, making sure every touchpoint that as we created, were delightful and both visceral and visually pleasing experiences, and that our designs were created with accessibility in mind.
As we collaborated with the Apple HIG (Human Interface Guidelines for the professional Applications) we did not only define style guides, such as adaptive layouts, color palettes, use of typefaces, etc, we also created or defined any of the following: animation, branding, color (palettes), components and buttons, dark mode (and naturally, light mode), launch screen, library of (components, icons, glyphs, cursors), light (direction of) materials, terminology, typography, video, etc. I helped introduce best practices and principles, and I helped hire the department’s initial design talent that under my and my peer’s leadership launched many wildly successful products, including Emmy-award winning video editing ‘FinalCut Pro X’, Grammy award winning ‘Logic’ and ‘Garageband’, the first ‘iPod’, “.Mac.’ and others — breakthroughs that changed the way people create, experience, and share photos, videos and music. This kind of work helped make Apple the iconic company that it is today. I oversaw both visual interface and user experience design teams — long before UX became a term, multi-disciplinary creative teams that handled design, production, and engineering relations as well as product marketing and packaging design. This kind of work helped make Apple the iconic company that it is today.
Rendering by Abi Brody and artwork from yanandjun when Apple became the world’s first trillion dollar company
Background
Starting out in 2001, I was one of Apple’s first application product design leads hired. Within less than a year, I was enrolled at Apple’s internal employee training program, the so-called Apple University taught by Apple’s former Chief Talent Officer Dan Walker and Sina Tamaddon. I was promoted to a hiring manager and design lead to help grow Apple’s new applications division. Our division was small but at the time created not only the user experience for the very first iPod but also launched the iTunes music store and shortly after that, in an iterative fashion, building out Steve Jobs’ vision of Apple’s creative media and productivity hub and ecosystem. I led both Human Interface (HI) and visual design efforts for Apple’s post-production/ editing, animation, and compositing tools, including FinalCut Pro X, Logic. While we designed Apple’s photography tools from the ground up (Aperture), we transformed acquired technologies into award-winning Apple’s flagship products, such as Apple’s video and audio product lines. Aside from leading the professional applications for almost a decade, I was invited to take on hands-on design leadership roles for many secret projects.
At Apple, both designers and engineers were expected to lead and create products — from concept to launch. Among those were Apple’s first multi-touch devices and wearables, including the first iPhone, iPod nano, Nike+, and Apple Health. I collaborated closely with marketing for ‘Steve’s’ keynotes and Apple’s graphics design department to art direct printed materials, packaging, and merchandise design. I have always been a creative leader who fostered product experiences that were purposeful, efficient, elegant, and delightful. I created collaborative environments where the design was the end result and a methodology and practice that resulted in happy people, employees, and customers. My role was focused on product design and design leadership, leading teams to conceptualize, design, and develop product experiences for Apple’s innovative and award-winning professional applications. I also provided design guidance to the Apple hardware and macOS design groups, including foundational efforts for what would later become iOS (multi-touch device GUI) and the newly adopted ‘dark look.’
I evangelized motivated groups and committed to our design goals at all levels within Apple’s software design team and Apple’s engineering stakeholders. With a critical eye for detail, interaction, and aesthetics, my ability to articulate design issues as they related to these attributes resulted in an unparalleled product experience. We did not just work on the software itself but researched and thus orchestrated the entire professional user experience and ecosystem with all its touch points from start to finish. We imagined how the user would learn about the app in a review, shop on the Apple website, or visit the Apple store. We decided what she would see or read on the box and how she would import her photos or footage, sort, compare and edit them and eventually share and publish them in the form of (photo)books, (web)galleries, and movies. As we designed and improved Apple’s professional applications, we learned about the importance of keeping the user interface fully transparent while letting users focus on the content, including visuals and sounds.
Learn about the first iPhone’s
design case study.
Credits
Shown here is information about Apple’s professional video and audio applications that I’ve helped design and lead over the years, done in collaboration with incredibly talented people, who I’ve gotten to know and enjoy. A few names come to mind without most of this great work would not have been possible:
all renderings in this gallery were created by A. Brody (that’s me 😋) with one image from yanaandjun.
Sarah Bonk, Eddy Cue, Patrick Heynen, Steve Jobs, Dan Fisch, Brian Frick, Marian and Rachel Goldeen, Robert Kondrk, Oliver Krevet, Charles Migos, Greg Niles, Brian Rose, Roger Rosner, Egan Schulz, Chris Sanders, Mike Stern, Will Stein, Sina Tamaddon, Jean Tsong, Randy Ubillos, Tanya Washburn, Dan Walker, Tim Wasko, and many, many more — I wish I could give credit to each and everyone, however, that’s simply not possible: thanks to you all.
About Apple
Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.
This gallery is not complete without a quote from Steve Jobs:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.” These words pretty much sum up why I joined Apple in 2001 when it was almost going bankrupt. I am immensely grateful that I could spend working with Steve Jobs’s talented and close-knit team that he could attract to Apple during the last decade of his life.