By April of next year, Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president of industrial design, will have left the business.

Hankey’s intention to depart Apple was disclosed internally this week, as Bloomberg reports (Opens in a new window) . She assumed the position when Jony Ive departed the firm in 2019, and as a result, she has been in charge of overseeing Apple’s hardware design while it switched from using AMD and Intel chips to its own M-branded ones.

An Apple spokesperson stated in a statement:

“To imagine products that are unmistakably Apple, Apple’s design team brings together expert creatives from around the world and across many disciplines. Strong, seasoned leaders make up the senior design team. We applaud Evans for her leadership and contributions and she intends to continue on while we navigate the transition.

Apple is of course faced with the conundrum of who will replace Hankey? Designer Richard Howarth might be a front-runner for 9To5Google suggests (Opens in a new window) since he served as the vice president of industrial design from 2015 to 2017, the time that Ive was appointed chief design officer.

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Hankey will likely stay at Apple for another six months, so we won’t likely find out where she is headed next. However, it’s unlikely that she has been without offers after holding such a prominent role at Apple.

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