Design Thinker • Innovation Strategist • UCD Consultant
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs
It’s always invaluable learning for me to be inspired by the design-thinking process behind an iconic brand. So I got excited when I came across this brilliant article on the presentation technique used for the NeXT logo by the legendary graphic designer Paul Rand, the “presentation book” as it’s called, is worth taking a look at as a student of design if you are eager to inquire into the mindset & approach of Rand. Just to give you some background, Steve Jobs left Apple along with several of his co-workers and set up a new company in 1985 which he named NeXT, and the story goes that he approached the Brooklyn-based Paul Rand who had previously done logos for Esquire, IBM, ABC, Westinghouse, and UPS, to design a logo for his company which he accepted. Though I wasn’t surprised when I discovered that he had such limited knowledge about NeXT to design a decent identity and yet the proof of his creative intelligence is right there in front of us.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]In 1986 Jobs approached Rand to design the logo for his NeXT educational computer company. After obtaining permission from IBM, Jobs offered Rand a handsome sum to develop a logo for a product that was not yet public. The only thing Rand knew was that the mysterious NeXT computer was a black cube. With this scant yet meaningful intelligence, Rand developed a unique proposal book for the mark that walked the reader – Mr Jobs – through the step by step conceptual process to the final, logical outcome.[/perfectpullquote]
Designers often thrive on ambiguity and mystery. Indeed, there are various procedures to understand the design challenge in order to create an approach, but sometimes that information which you receive for analysis is either insufficient, vague or lacking in insightful knowledge, and yet the expectations from the outcome are tremendously high. This is one of the reasons why I admire Paul Rand as an exemplar of a great graphic designer, his creative intelligence helped develop strong brands that outlived even the institutions that they were designed for.
Coming back to NeXT, it’s one thing to design a logo and quite another to present it to an individual like Steve Jobs who was passionate about design and a nitpicker. So when he asked Paul Rand for designing a number of options to consider for his logo, the 71-year old Rand famously declared that he’d not create options for his clients – “I will solve your problem, and you will pay me,” he told Jobs, “you can use what I produce, or not, but I will not do options, and either way you will pay me.” He paid Paul Rand an astonishing $100,000 for one design.
This is one of my favourite documentaries on Steve Jobs, an interview with the legend who’s at his best reliving his time at Apple, NeXT, and beyond. It’s full of anecdotes from his thought process on product design, and why Microsoft is after all…Microsoft and I thought to reproduce some of his insightful quotes. This interview was conducted by Bob Cringely in 1995, it was lost until the director of the series found a VHS copy in his garage, and released to theatres in 2012.
At a time when technology has virtually seeped into our psyche, this interview brings a tremendous insight as to how far we have come, and especially for Apple as a company as it continues to innovate.
“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over $10 million when I was 24 and over $100 million when I was 25. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money. I think money is a wonderful thing ’cause it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback and things like that. But especially at that point in my life, it was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the company, the people, the products we were making, what we were gonna enable people to do with these products.”
This is an insightful cover article on Apple’s new headquarters by Steven Levy (@stevenlevy) from the WIRED magazine. The campus was Steve Jobs’ dream and his finest design creation which has transformed into a futuristic architectural marvel today (and fondly identified as the ‘Ring’). Some quick notes from the write-up below.
The iPhone 7/Plus launched without the standard 3.5mm audio jack creating a storm on the Internet. The problem isn’t about the missing elements from a traditional user interaction perspective with a device such as the iPhone as it is about changing a user’s perception. It’s indeed very courageous of Apple to remove the audio jack completely replacing it with the lightning connector which means you cannot listen to music while charging (it’ll require a new $40 accessory). Simply put, we can’t charge AND listen to music or take calls simultaneously and we have to keep the iPhones charged. Suggesting that Apple wants the AirPods as your default hearing device regardless. Apple’s users have often had to reluctantly change the way they interact with devices based purely on how Apple defined its product line so ‘courageously’ and regardless of how frustrating it was. The astonished fans complained but eventually caved in. Now, this isn’t the first time that Apple has done something ‘courageous’ with its product line by removing a standard feature or software – the iPads didn’t support Adobe Flash (they still don’t even today), and yet if the sales numbers are correct the audience seems to have loved the iPad! From a product design standpoint with its power to innovate Apple really at the helm of changing user behaviour of this generation unquestionably. Perhaps Apple did contemplate the backlash of its decision to remove the 3.5mm audio jack from the iPhones and the ‘courageous’ comment from Phil Schiller is proof of defending itself from its perched place. So if there’s one product company which is going to affect our lives within the realm of technology and design innovation it’d be Apple.
Here’s Steve Jobs explaining ‘courage’ perfectly with Apple’s products.