After his departure from Apple, the services of Jony Ive as a designer they have become highly sought after and have allowed him to associate himself with other iconic brands. The case of Ferrari is one of the most recognized, without a doubt. But it has also opened the doors to other quite curious developments, being a record player of more than 60,000 dollars his most recent craze.
LoveFrom, Jony Ive’s design firm, was in charge of the design of a special edition of the Sondek LP12of linn. It was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of both the Scottish brand and the turntable itself. Of course, your access will be tremendously limited, not only because of the price, but because only 250 units will be produced.
They can already be reserved on Linn’s website, with a price starting at £50,000; that is, about 64,100 dollars at the exchange rate of the day. Of course, Jony Ive and his company aren’t audio experts, so they focused on the industrial design of the new Sondek LP12-50 —being that his formal name—, while Linn took care of everything related to improving the sound.
“The LoveFrom team took some time to get to know the Sondek LP12 before Jony called me to discuss his suggestions, initially focusing on improvements to the plastic hinges and speed control and power switch. If you’ve ever asked a real estate agent to look at your house, you’ll know how I felt,” explained Gilad Tiefenbrun, CEO of Linn.
Linn’s new turntable designed by Jony Ive
The limited edition Sondek LP12-50 designed by Jony Ive’s company arrives with new metal hinges created to improve the effectiveness of the dust cover. To this is added a power button carved from a solid piece of aluminum, plus a revamped speed control.
Curved edges were also implemented on the top cover and on the dashboard where the arm is located, to highlight the changes made. Each unit will carry a plaque commemorating Linn’s collaboration with Jony Ive, indicating the number of the turntable within the limited edition of 250.
Linn, for her part, opted to incorporate a skirting board developed under its Bedrok technology. According to the company, it is made up of “orthogonal layers of beech placed under extreme pressure to create a completely new, solid and massive material.” The result is an ultra-dense wood that improves the isolation of the turntable mechanism and optimizes vibration absorption.
A collaboration that emerged on LinkedIn
The British company indicates that this special version of the Sondek LP12 will be manufactured and delivered to buyers between August 2023 and March 2024. Furthermore, according to reports Fast Company, Jony Ive’s studio carried out the work without agreeing to a financial agreement or financial rewards. “There are many things that I always wanted to be able to do simply for the love of doing them. And there is a substantial percentage of our work that we do simply for the love of doing it,” said the former Apple design leader.
The most curious thing about the collaboration between Linn and LoveFrom is that it came through a message on LinkedIn. This is how Tiefenbrun explained it:
“In early 2022, I received a LinkedIn request from a sender I didn’t recognize for a meeting with British design guru Sir Jony Ive. Of course, I immediately deleted it, believing it to be spam. However, as the process progressed, day, I had a nagging feeling in my stomach.
Suddenly, the feeling crystallized into a thought: What if he really is Sir Jony Ive? I then spent the next 15 minutes figuring out how to recover a message from the Trash on LinkedIn, before scheduling a FaceTime meeting via a personal assistant with who turned out to be the real Sir Jony Ive.”
Jony Ive acknowledged his liking for Linn’s products and made it clear that this project was addressed with a special love. “I’ve had several Linn products over the years and music has always been very important to me. So you can imagine. I think the first consistent music player I designed was the original iPod, and that started a multi-generational journey. iPod, and multiple AirPods and music accessories. I feel very lucky to have come full circle, so many years after my first visit to the factory,” he explained.