Apple’s Jony Ive Wins British Visionary Innovator Award

Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, has won the “British Visionary Innovator” award given out by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office in honor of World IP Day. The designer topped a list of ten notable designers, inventors, and other creative people, including Tim Berners Lee, J.K. Rowling, and Simon Cowell.

The IPO had put together a list of ten nominees from television, music, art, design, business, and science who have “achieved considerable success or displayed ‘visionary’ behavior in spotting ‘The Next Big Thing,’ or developed innovative products, services, or designs never seen before.” They then opened up online voting between April 17-24 to determine the winner of the award.

Sir Jon took the top vote count with 46.6 percent of the vote, more than twice that of his nearest competitor. The second place finisher, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, known for inventing the underlying technology that makes the Internet work, received 18.8% of the vote. The remaining nominees and their vote tallies can be seen in the graph. Write-ins were also allowed, with a few notable ones being Sir Richard Branson, Alan Turing (inventor of the Turing Machine), and The Monty Python team.

 

Graph of the Vote Tally for the Innovator Award

Voting Results for the “British Visionary Innovator” Award

Sir Jonathan has received numerous awards in the past including, a National Design Award,  Designer of the Year, “Most Influential Person on British Culture” from the BBC, “Inventor of the Decade” from the Guardian, and of course his knighthood. He has also received an honorary doctorate from the UK’s Royal College of Art.