07 October 2011

It’s been a bit over a day now since the news of Steve Jobs passing reached our offices, and as the director of the agency, I thought I would break from our regular broadcast on the blog to add my own thoughts and reflections to the growing number of sentiments that have been circulating online and in print out of respect and gratitude for a man whose contributions to the world have not only touched me personally, but also have had an unmistakable impact on the design and illustration community at large.

While I have experienced the loss of family members, friends, and pets, hearing of Jobs death really shook me in a way that took me by surprise. It was only until the week had finished and I started soaking up the tributes in my RSS feeds, and came across this unaired ad featuring his original voiceover did I really feel a profound sense of loss.

Like most, I never knew the man personally, and I fully acknowledge the fact that the total output of Apple is a group effort on a massive scale, but perhaps that may have been his greatest achievement – creating such a sense of intimacy through his work and the products that we used every day and became essential tools of our trade.

It was through these tools that also as served physical markers for the passing of time. The first Mac I bought in college. The iBook that I took with me on my journey to Australia. The first time I was able to afford to properly pimp out a 27" iMac. Like office chairs and mattresses, you were going to spend a third of your lifetime using these products, of course you are going to develop some weird attachments.

To many though, these weren’t just dumb computers. They were objects that you were having a real tangible relationship with, and under Steve’s guidance, no detail was spared. The sound and feel of a key being pressed. Peeling the protective film off an LCD screen. The way an iPhone slid into your back pocket. Maybe I am slightly fetishising the consumer experience, but I can’t deny that these little things brought me small moments of happiness. Steve Jobs was a man who not only understood design and the impact that it can have on our lives, but was able to harness the potential for joy it could create.

To that end, I admired Steve Jobs as an artist. The individual who was able to brilliantly orchestrate the operation of his business in such a way that they were able to create products that didn’t just feel like we were using them, but rather were in harmony with. His work helped us see the world in a new way, and gave tangible form to raw ideas. He had an uncompromising vision, and he was able to execute it flawlessly. (For the sake of the moment however, we will not mention those terrible iMac puck mouses, or Foxconn working conditions. Also, RIP Notepods)

Like all great artists, he has inspired countless numbers of people from businessmen to musicians. A fact that has become even more clear in the days since his death as people like me write in with their own stories. Even to this day, whenever I see talks by great designers or illustrators, there is a point in everyone’s personal narrative where they talk about their work and how it changed when Mac’s came into the studio. From typography to photography, the Mac continues to be a universal symbol for the creative class, and in many ways Steve was the physical manifestation of our aesthetics and ideals.

In that regard, I feel an enormous sense of gratitude for the opportunities that were afforded to me and others like me because of the doors that he opened. I never have underestimated the sheer force that dumb luck can have over both successes and failures, and in many ways it is luck that saw me born at the right time in the right place to have access to these emerging technologies and utilise them for growth, but I can also confidently state that most of the illustrators we represent, as well as the clients who commission them, have also benefitted in some way from Steve’s work.

Beyond all this however, I think what I will miss most is the simple sense of wonder and surprise which seemed to coincide with every keynote or new product announcement. The giddy feeling I would get in the morning after a WWDC, waking up to immediately check the Apple homepage and read the announcements, or on more anticipated keynotes, the drowsy feeling of having to stay up until 4am to livestream ‘One more thing…’ in the office.

I think in these times where all information is so easily available and accessible, that mystery can be sometimes be the most valuable currency. Sometimes it’s just more fun not to know things. This to me embodies the true spirit of imagination. The speculation of what is to come.

While it wasn’t and never will be the computer that made you a good designer, it was the brand new Mac, fresh out of the box, which represented the potential to to something great. A beautiful object that inspired you to make something that lived up to its own form and operation.

It is with that inspiration that both myself, as well as we as an agency, try in our own little ways to make things a bit more beautiful, and I have to thank Steve Jobs in some way for being a part of that, and hope that our work here in some way is a living testament to his life’s work.

–Jeremy