A man who began his career designing washbasins in Essex has won a prestigious design award for his stylish work with Apple computers.
Jonathan Ive has been named Designer of the Year in the competition run by London"s Design Museum to find "the UK designer that made the biggest contribution to design in the past year".
The 36-year-old has been largely responsible for transforming Apple"s image with his revolutionary curved shape all-in-one iMac.
His ideas helped establish the company"s products, which he said had previously been bland "beige boxes", as beautifully elegant objects in themselves.
When updating the iMac, Mr Ive famously consulted sweet manufactures to find out how he could make the plastic casing both blue and transparent.
His unique style can also be seen in the design of other Apple products, such as the iPod music player and the PowerBook portable computer.