BY MARK WILSON
We say that most brands “launch.” Like they are rockets fueled by quippy one-liners and rainbow-gradient TikToks, hurling themselves through the stratosphere.
LoveFrom, the design firm founded by Jony Ive and Marc Newson after the former left his position as Chief Design Officer at Apple in 2019, didn’t even have a website when it formed that year. Only two years later would the firm launch its public-facing site and mission statement punctuated by “Love & Fury,” set in a custom revitalization of the typeface Baskerville. Then only two years after that, would LoveFrom consider the typeface formalized enough to share publicly.
Now, a full five years later, are we meeting the LoveFrom mascot, Montgomery: a bear, paying homage to San Francisco’s Montgomery Street where LoveFrom is headquartered and will soon open its own store.
Montgomery has just appeared on LoveFrom’s website, where it will sniff and follow your cursor, before slowly navigating over the letters of LoveFrom like rocks in a pond. (Montgomery also made its debut in a new collaboration with Moncler, albeit a completely different skin: like a storybook character riding through Europe on a Vespa with its buddy the Monduck.)
LoveFrom’s slow-burn approach to both its brand and its projects is certainly something of a luxury. It’s a strategy that seems not particularly worried about money. The reaction I’ve seen from the design world has ranged from one of veneration, to impatience, to criticism, to flat-out jealousy. Much of the firm’s work we’ve seen has been a celebration of craft, done in-kind (though the firm is reportedly earning as much as $200 million annually from some of its clients).
Aside from unspecified creations for Apple in a now-expired partnership, LoveFrom’s work has included projects for King Charles, work with the Steve Jobs archive like the production of Make Something Wonderful, a 50th anniversary tribute to the Sondek LP12 record player, and a new coat featuring a wildly addictive magnetic button.
But this unhurried build of LoveFrom’s brand, be it in the measured footfalls of Montgomery or the drip cadence of crafted work, also serves as a multiyear tease to grander projects on LoveFrom’s horizon. Those include work with Ferrari that includes a new touchscreen, and new AI-based hardware with Sam Altman (LoveFrom will helm the design of the new startup set up in Jackson Square, with high ranking Apple design alums Tang Tan and Evans Hankey).
While things may look slow from the outside, there’s hardly time to stop and sniff the cursor.
FastCompany
