Apple Senior Vice President of design, Jony Ive, has been promoted to Chief Design Officer – a newly-created C-level position within the Cupertino-based technology giant’s hierarchy. In his new role as Chief Design Officer, Ive will ultimately oversee the operations of both the industrial and software design units which he was directly in charge of, while the day-to-day managerial tasks and responsibilities will fall under the purview of two newly-promoted department heads.

The announcement came via an article written by Stephen Fry published Monday by U.K. publication The Telegraph. Ive shared the news of his imminent promotion with Fry when the English comedian, actor, writer and self-proclaimed Apple Fanboi visited Apple’s headquarters last week.

A leaked internal email from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Apple employees, obtained by 9to5Mac, served as the only other formal announcement of Ive’s promotion. As of the time of writing, there was no announcement on Apple’s public relations page.

On July 1, Jony Ive will hand off the day-to-day running of the Industrial Design (ID) and User Interface (UI) departments to Richard Howarth, who has been named vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, who has been named vice president of User Interface Design, respectively.

Both executives have had long-standing and influential involvement in Apple products. Richard Howarth has been part of the iPhone team since the first iteration of the device was in development and Alan Dye was deeply involved in both the redesign of iOS7 and the new Watch OS UI that made its debut on Apple’s newly-released wearable.

Ive’s new role and the resulting freedom will allow him to work on projects involving the design of Apple’s retail stores and the company’s new campus.

Ive told Fry that he won’t be involved in just the building design of Apple’s new campus, but also in the design of things like the desks and chairs for employees.

Ive started work at Apple in 1992 and became the company’s chief of industrial design in 1997. In 2012, software design was added to Ive’s responsibilities when he was put in charge of a new department dubbed Human Interface. In 2013, his title became Senior Vice President of Design.

Photo credit: Marco Paköeningrat, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0