I'm not usually moved to public displays of sadness, however when I heard the BBC news this morning I felt I had to comment on the untimely passing of a man who has made an enormous impact on the past twenty years of my creative life, without even knowing him - Steve Jobs.
When I started out as a designer twenty three years ago I worked on a drawing board and spent my days cutting with a scalpel and pasting up pieces of text onto layout boards. A slow, fiddly and messy process. Seventy years previously my Great Grandfather was a compositor for the Hants & Berks newspaper, even more fiddly, setting text, letter by letter, to print on a press. I am told his spelling and punctuation were beyond perfect, as not only did he have to place each individual letter onto a board to make up the words, but he had to do it all back to front so that when printed the copy would read the right way round. I digress - one day I was taken from my drawing board and sat in front of a very basic Apple Macintosh, given 20 minutes instruction and then left to "have a play" and learn as I went. Twenty years later I am still playing, with what is probably my best ever toy, every day, and still learning. I've only been blogging for a month for example, using my Mac, and loving a creative process that is new to me. So yes you can teach an old designer new tricks - my Great Grandfather would be amazed at what I can do using only the small box sat by my side and, of course, spell check making sure I get it right!!
When I set up on my own and invested in my very own Mac it really felt like a great achievement to have one sitting on my kitchen table. In those days they weren't the household toy that everyone coveted, but pretty much only used by creatives. When people talked about their PC's I did cock a bit of a snoop as I knew my Mac was by far superior, a Rolls Royce by comparison, both in looks and performance. I confess I was a Mac snob and I didn't care! Of course I have days when, like most designers, I have to give it a good stern speaking to if I feel it's not keeping up with my creative flow and the deadline is tight! But then as my creative hero, William Morris, once said: "you can't have art without resistance in the materials".
When William Morris died, on the 3rd October 1896, Robert Blatchford wrote in the Clarion:
I cannot help thinking that it does not matter what goes into the Clarion this week, because William Morris is dead. And what socialist will care for any other news this week, beyond that one said fact? He was our best man, and he is dead... It is true that much of his work still lives, and will live. But we have lost him, and, great as was his work, he himself was greater... he was better than the best.
I think that today the same can be said for Mr Jobs and his vision for Apple.
So I, along with many other lifelong creative Mac users, would like to thank him for creating one of best ways I have found to express my creativity over the past twenty years.
I love my Mac and always will.
