LOS ANGELES — Fans of the clean, inviting look of the iPhone, iPad and other blockbuster Apple products are legion, and that includes Queen Elizabeth II.
The British monarch has awarded a knighthood to Jonathan Paul Ive, a Brit and head of Apple’s design team since the mid-’90s.
Ive received a KBE, short for Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. The honor was announced Saturday for services to design and enterprise.
“To be recognized with this honor is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful,” Ive said in a statement. “I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design. I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple.”
Ive is credited with helping the late Steve Jobs bring the consumer-electronics company back from the brink of financial ruin in the late 1990s with his whimsical design for the iMac computer, which originally came in bright colors at a time when bland shades dominated the PC world. He later helped transform Apple into a consumer-electronics powerhouse and the envy of Silicon Valley with the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
