Apple’s longest-serving senior industrial designer is leaving the company, marking the near-complete turnover of a team once led by Jony Ive.

Apple’s longest-serving senior industrial designer is leaving the company, marking the near-complete turnover of a team once led by Jony Ive, reports Bloomberg.

Bart Andre, who joined Apple in 1992 alongside Ive, told colleagues this month that he is retiring, the article says, quoting unnamed “people familiar with the matter.” Andre was one of the last remaining designers from the Ive era — in fact, he was even at Apple prior to Steve Jobs returning to the helm in the late 1990s.

The designer was known as one of Ive’s top lieutenants and helped run the team after former chief Evans Hankey, Ive’s successor, departed last year. He’s also known as one of the biggest holders of Apple patents.

"His mark on Apple products is indelible — I see him every day in the details,” said Christopher Stringer, who used to work with Andre at Apple and now runs sound company Syng.

The departure is the latest in recent months for the group. Top designers Colin Burns, Shota Aoyagi and Peter Russell-Clarke all left around the end of last year.

The team is currently run by Jeff Williams, the company’s chief operating officer, instead of a designer. Having an operations person oversee a division dedicated to design and innovation has rankled some staff, according to the people close to the situation. Cost-cutting measures also have added to the unrest, they said. Under Ive, the team embarked on exploratory projects that didn’t necessarily have an immediate payoff — something that’s been reined in.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Ive’s core design team was made up of about two dozen people for well over a decade. Around the time Ive left in 2019, an exodus began. Today, after Andre’s departure, the team only has a few longtime designers remaining, including Richard Howarth, Molly Anderson and Duncan Kerr. The outflow of talent has benefited Ive’s current firm, LoveFrom, which has hired several former Apple designers.