Ollie Wagner

I joined Apple’s Human Interface team as an intern in the fall of 2008 and worked there until 2011. I designed Safari, Contacts, Media Player, and Settings for the original iPad, and 323 of the original Apple emoji. I’ve talked about the emoji in an interview and on Emojipedia’s podcast.

Since 2013 I’ve run YAP Studios, where we design and build software for Apple, College Board, Verizon, and others. Clients bring us the work they can’t afford to get wrong. What we bring is design and judgment: knowing what to make, and making it well. I design in code, on small teams, end to end.

I’m named on 20 U.S. patents:

The original iPad’s design (2 patents)
Pinching a thumbnail open into what it shows (7 patents)
Modifying a multi-column application
Navigating through a hierarchy
Correcting text with voice recognition (2 patents)
Four more interface designs, for Apple
Media clips, for Verizon (2 patents)
A spatial publishing platform, for YAP Studios

I also build furniture: faithful reproductions of Ming dynasty pieces, among them the Met’s 17th- or 18th-century altar coffer, which Fine Woodworking showed in issue 289, and two of the horseshoe chairs from Robert Hatfield Ellsworth’s collection.

The walnut altar coffer from the front, with brass pulls on its three drawers · Photographed by Charles Palmer

One of the horseshoe chairs from the front, its top rail curving down into both arms · Photographed by Charles Palmer

I write here about design and engineering. Every page on this site is also markdown: add .md to its address, or ask for text/markdown.