Sir Jony Ive attends fundraiser at Northumbria University Sir Jony, a graduate of Northumbria's Design for Industry course when it was known as Newcastle Polytechnic, spent time on the campus before meeting with students from the University's School of Design. "I worked with his father [a silversmith who became a design technology teacher and later a schools inspector] on the panel of a design competition for students," Tom Karen said. He got in touch with me a bit later and said, my son Jonathan's at university in Newcastle and is thinking about giving up his industrial design course. Maybe you could revive his interest? Karen invited the design student to the Letchworth offices of Ogle, the company he led from 1962 to 1999. "I showed them around, and the outcome was that Jonathan stuck to industrial design and made a huge success of it," he added. The 47-year old received a knighthood for services to design and enterprise in 2012.