Sit Down
with an iPhone Designer
Freddy Anzures has been getting a lot of calls lately. As the 10 year anniversary of the iphone passes, we forget that it wasn’t just Steve Jobs handiwork, but a small team of 6 designers who worked methodically to create the phone that’s probably in your pocket right now. One of these designers, Freddy Anzures, is the mind behind functions such as visual voicemail and the lock screen. A Filipino American who was raised by hip-hop, vintage posters and ethical design, Freddy is very unique voice in art and technology.
We sat down in Freddy’s new gallery space in the Lower Haight, right around the corner from Groove Merchant Records, where store owner Chris was nice enough to let us take some photos of Freddy in his natural element -- surrounded by vinyl, posters, art, books and good company.
Ed & Nate: Good to see you, man.
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Freddy Anzures: It’s good to be seen.
Ed & Nate: Would you mind telling us who you are and what you do?
Freddy: My name’s Freddy Anzures. There are a number of roles that I associate myself with, but the one that I’d like to be considered is inventor.
Ed & Nate: Inventor? Not designer.
Freddy: I think the word designer has kind of changed in definition over the years from a creative problem solver to someone who simply makes things look pretty. I like to consider myself as someone who realizes things that don’t exist.
Ed & Nate: How did you become an inventor?
Freddy: For the past 14 years, I’ve worked as a designer at Apple. And I was fortunate enough to work with Steve Jobs and the original iphone design team.
Ed & Nate: What was that experience like?
Freddy: Great. When you’re given the opportunity to create product that doesn’t exist and are given the canvas to realize how this product will manifests itself, it gives you an opportunity to invent things and find ways of making something that’s familiar to people.
You have to remember that 10 years ago, a touch screen in your pocket was not considered a common thing. We had to think, ‘What does it look like? How does it behave?’ So that required a lot of invention, a lot of sensitivity to what people are already familiar with so that we could translate those things into technology. We wanted it to feel as if you knew how to use it, the moment you held it.
Ed & Nate: Did you have any idea the cultural or technological significance of what you were making at the time? Or, was it like working on any other another project?
Freddy: If you’re a real inventor, you’re going to want to create something that you think improves something. So, I think a lot of the phones success had to do with the fact that we wanted to create something that we would want to use.
Ed & Nate: I like that. Make something that you would want.
Freddy: Yea. First of all, you have to know what you want and know what needs to be improved. If you remember, prior to the iphone, accessing voicemail was a really cumbersome task. You had to use your phone keypad to access rewind, fast forward, delete, etc.
Ed & Nate: Dial star 7 to delete. Dial star 3 to go to the next message. I remember that..
Freddy: Right? And you may have gotten 5 consecutive messages from 5 different people, but you had to listen to them in the order in which you received them. There was no ability to pick based on the priority in which you wanted to listen to something. I always thought that was a limitation of phone companies It didn’t feel right to me. Especially given the fact that voicemail is an amalgamation of 2 words: voice and mail.
Ed & Nate: Hmm...
Freddy: So I started to think, ‘How can we improve this?’ I started thinking about email. All email is is a list of people, with a blue dot to show whether something’s unread. And if you tap on that person’s name, you essentially see the message they sent you. Isn’t voicemail the same thing as email, but instead of hearing the message, you see it?
Ed & Nate: (laughs) I guess it is.
Freddy: So that’s how visual voicemail was made. We took what was familiar to people and made it something new. I think that it was a smash because now, people could see who called them. And instead to using the keypad with these weird combinations of buttons, we had a screen that could communicate what those functions were with buttons that said CALL BACK or DELETE. That’s what an inventor does. An inventor sees functionality.
Ed & Nate: That’s a great approach.
Freddy: I’m still aspiring to become a pure inventor. But one of their main traits is seeing that everything around you was made by someone else. And if you’re not down with how that person made it, you can change it.
It’s also about being sensitive to how people use things. And having the foresight to anticipate that there’s a better way people can use stuff.
Ed & Nate: When you’re creating, designing and inventing for the the future, do you find yourself looking for inspiration in the past?
Freddy: Personally, I do. Some people think that’s a nostalgic approach to creativity. You could look at it that way. The way I like to look at it is that it’s not nostalgic, as much as it’s familiar. To me, making something that’s a nod to what’s already familiar ensures that you’re not alienated people from new things.
But I think that’s becoming more and more challenging now because the devices that people have in their pockets are kind of making people robots, to be honest. A lot of devices are removing the human touch from your life. When you have a generation of people who are on these devices that are causing them not to be human, than the expectation for those same people to create products that are coming from human centered approach is going to be really rare.
Ed & Nate: This makes me think of the Time Well Spent movement, and other pushes to be mindful of our technology habits.
Freddy: I’m real strict with my use of technology. I don’t want to be a robot, because then you’ll only make robotic things.
Ed & Nate: You mention negative effects of technology in last 10 years. Can you give us an example of using something familiar to lessen the negative effects of technology?
Freddy: I don’t know if it’s anything that anybody can design or create. It has a lot to do with human nature. To be connected, and to feel love. And to want attention. I think what’s unfortunate is that there are many social platforms whose sole purpose is feeding that love or attention.
Ed & Nate: Social platforms?
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Freddy: Yes. Social platforms are the nicotine. And the phones are the cigarette. The phone is just the delivery method for the drug.
Ed & Nate: Unpack that for a second. You designed many aspects of this phone. Do you feel bad for working on it?
Freddy: There are pros and cons. As an artist, you don’t know what life your art will have once its in the world. It depends on whatever’s going on in the world at that particular moment. But there’s not thing we can do to reverse the repercussions of technology. You wanna do that, go meditate, leave your phone at home. Go to the woods.
Ed & Nate: Are you from California?
Freddy: I’m not. I’m from the East coast. From D.C., Maryland area. When people asked me where I was from when I first moved here, I said D.C., and they’d say, ‘What? Daly City?’ I moved out to San Francisco in 1999.
Ed & Nate: How has living in the Bay Area influenced your creativity.
Freddy: What’s great about San Francisco and the Bay Area is that there is a rich history of outsider culture. Sly and the Family Stone. Haight Ashbury. Summer of Love. There are a bunch of cultural movements that happened here. There is a motivation to want to change things, improve things.
Creatively, the Bay has a great culture of second hand, vintage and antique fair stuff. Whether it’s books, records, clothing or furniture. The Bay has a great handle on things that came before. People appreciate it more here. There’s a market for it. So for me, it helps with the work I do for WaxPoetics, because it’s a celebration of the old and the new. And with tech stuff...I don’t think most people in the tech industry are looking at old stuff to get inspired. It gives me an angle..
Ed & Nate: I’ve noticed that you’re always looking at old magazines, design journals, records..
Freddy: Yea -- it’s a hip-hop sensibility. You have to be resourceful and use the things around you to create something new.
Ed & Nate: Can you break down your creative process into 3 steps?
Freddy: 3 words. Observe. Respect. Create.
Observe how things are. Second, respect that there are systems and practices and things traditional to a community or a location that shouldn’t be ignored. You don’t want to disrespect the rituals that have been traditional for a situation. Out of observing and determining what is good or bad, coupled with the respect for the traditions of how people are doing things, can formulate a creative solution.
Ed & Nate: What are you working on next?
Freddy: It’s funny. Creative people love to pride themselves on how many things they’re doing, and who they’re doing it with. I feel like a lot of what’s next for me is not about the who or the what, but the why. What’s the point? I want to grow old peacefully, and be a noble human being. I want to contribute to society in a way that has integrity because we have limited time here. As you get older, you become sensitive to the outcome of of what you’re doing. Is it going to matter? That becomes the focus.
