End of an Era: Steve Jobs
Jeff Reynolds
jeff at siphonophore.com
Fri Aug 26 14:29:09 EDT 2011
sorry i have no blog so ill present my thoughts here to the list...
This is an unending discussion with my design partner about the
current state of design. Gene worked in the Eames office when very
young and was able to see the magic that someone that has that
attention to detail and the ability to focus their talents to bring
the design out -- not create it -- from the chaos. Jobs was one of the
few folks in any level or power that really understood this with a
passion and a sheer force of will to make it happen in the last few
decades. I am really hoping he has left a mark w/in Apple the company
to nurture this and allow classical design to shine on and not be
demoted to the level it has at most companies of having the say so
equal to the rest of the staff on design issues or being done by
someone who cant do a pencil sketch to save their lives.
there is a reason apple stores are always full of people playing with
the toys and if you watch they are stroking them and feeling the
curves on the products. you dont see that kind of basic monkey
interaction even in a store filled with designer handbags that cost
$25k each and are thought to be the height of design today... Jobs
also was brilliant on finding those things that are deep in the human
heart, linked to that basic monkey brain to touch first then do the
rest. if you can touch those basic things gracefully and quickly in a
human they will embrace what you are presenting with a hungry passion.
it will be truly universal and more immune to the tides of culture and
style. Even the store itself is done so cleanly that you can take a
picture from just about any angle and you wont get a bad shot, that is
really hard to do! the stores strike that fine balance of framing the
product to set it off cleanly, but fading into the background when the
eye is onto the product.
I agree with Kevin, luck is a part of it, but Jobs was able to create
his own luck by both sheer will and also knowing the true basics of
design as the points to start from applying that fantastic will.
I had to laugh at Kevin's mention of the demos. i saw his second
public demo of the next cube while a grad student at UC Berkeley. I
went to see Jobs and the cube but never even thought i would ever even
think about wanting one -- at $10K, that was a fortune to me at the
time. It was a tough audience there of folks that respected him, but
were mostly dubious about this 'business' machine that cost so much.
well, he spellbound the whole crowd of 1000 or so in the chem lecture
forum over the hour or so and had every single person walking out the
door thinking of how they could sell something, mortgage a child, or
rob a gas station to come up with that $10K. it was truly amazing.
wall street thought his success was brilliant business maneuvers, but
it was this love of design i think was his ace in the hole to set up
the business situations (he also is a great business mind as well) to
his advantage in situations that looked like he could not win.
Jobs, Waz and Atkinson and others at Apple had a profound effect on my
life over the years and i thank them all deeply for it! they provided
me with tools that allowed me to do things that i think had a small,
positive effect on the world and do it in a way that even the design
of the their tools effected my own design process and sensibilities in
a positive and productive way.
here is to hoping that his stepdown will give him the time to focus
that sheer force of will onto his own life and get as much of his
health back as possible.
cheers
jeff
On Aug 26, 2011, at 1:00 PM, use-livecode-request at lists.runrev.com
wrote:
> Thursday, August 25, 2011, 8:40:20 AM, you wrote:
>
>> If all Americans loved their work the way he did, we would be
>> unparalleled in the quality of products we produced.
>
> ...and with that in mind...
>
> https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKxXTw
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