Why We Buy

About the tamest description offered of Apple's saucy iMac computer is that it is "postbeige" -- a neat phrase that is simultaneously descriptive and hopeful.

More typically, the 15-month-old iMac has inspired a blossoming of puns, metaphors, colorful language, and just plain silliness:

The iMac is egg-shaped, gumdrop-shaped, pear-shaped, hood-shaped, and beach-ball-like.

It is cute 'n' jazzy, retro-curvy, funky and snazzy, and extremely friendly.

It is a glowing, fruit-hued, Lifesaver-colored, trendoid status symbol.

It is an accessory, not just a tool.

You want to touch it, to hug it, to tickle it under its chin.

The iMac has put the crunch back into Apple. It is electrifying the entire computer industry. It is a design breakthrough.

Buying an iMac makes you feel hopeful again. It is a revolution in a box.

The iMac's design evokes such an emotional response that it even fires the imaginations of its critics. Tom Wolfe, who might have been prefiguring the iMac when he wrote "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," recently grumped that the iMac symbolized the death of 20th-century American design. The iMac, he said, is a "blobjet." On its own Web site, Apple calls it a "rocket computer."

Call it what you will, the iMac is indisputably successful. In its first year on the market, 2 million iMacs were sold. During most of that time, the iMac was the number one -- selling computer model in the country.

And, not surprisingly, the computer has had a direct impact on Apple's bottom line: The iMac has helped pull Apple back to profitability for two years in a row and has helped boost the company's stock price from 15 to 70.

As no computer has done since the early days of Apple computers, the iMac has captivated consumers. Apple claims that one-third of individuals who bought iMacs never owned a computer before; independent surveys cut that figure in half. Either way, it's an amazing statistic. People have been moved to purchase a first computer because of the image that the iMac conveys -- because of its colors, its approachability, its simplicity. The iMac has even managed to silence the decadelong crossfire -- PC or Mac? Apple seems to be winking broadly at that question and asking one of its own: Which color? It may be difficult to believe, but until the iMac came along, no manufacturer had produced a computer in a rainbow of colors. Colors pose inventory problems. Who needs the extra hassle? Khaki computers work just fine.

The iMac won a spot in popular culture almost instantly -- it has come to represent all turn-of-the-century computers. On shows like "Ally McBeal," office workers use iMacs simply because their appearance says, "I am a cool computer in a cool office."

The iMac's role as icon is no accident. Orchestrated by Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder and interim CEO (iCEO), the iMac is the labor of Jonathan Ive and the industrial-design group that he heads. Ive, 32, a Brit, started his career in London, designing everything from washbasins and bathtubs to TVs and VCRs for Japanese companies. As a contractor, Ive also helped design Apple's early PowerBooks, and he headed from London to Cupertino, California to join Apple full-time in 1992.

Almost everything that's striking about the iMac -- its unassuming shape, its candy-shop colors, its inviting cable cover -- had been carefully calculated. A case in point: Ive himself talked to companies that produce translucent candy to make sure that the iMac's translucence worked just right.

Ive's development group -- which also produced the iMac's new sibling, the iBook -- is intensely secretive. Reporters aren't allowed to interview Ive in his office because there's too much cool, futuristic stuff lying around. Ive won't say how many people work in industrial design, and he won't hint at what will come after the iBook, except to say, "We feel that we're just getting going."

Fast Company talked with Ive about the design principles that infuse the iMac, the iBook, and the ongoing work of his design group. From bathtubs to computers, here are some of Ive's fundamental rules for creating a design that sells.

Good Design Starts a Good Conversation

The right conversation is one that's meaningful to customers. Part of that is about design. And a lot of that is about making the design understandable. Because the technology is powerful, and because we're very confident about that, we don't have to obsess about trying to communicate just how powerful the iMac is. We can be more overtly concerned about, and put a lot of energy into, other attributes.

When people shop for an iMac, I love that the discussion is now much more egalitarian, more accessible, and more open, instead of being about technologies that many people don't understand. I like that you can go into a store and have a discussion about which color you want. That's something that the whole family can do. That's exciting. We've made the whole process of buying and using computers more accessible.