A few weeks ago, my eye doctor said to me, “I only know of two people who know anything about fonts, you and Steve Jobs.” Seemed Dr. Patel was re-doing his web site and had questions about the qualities of Trebuchet MS. But the line about Jobs raised an eyebrow, naturally, and it was as I suspected – Dr. Patel had read Jobs’ commencement address to the Stanford graduating class of 2005, the relevant portion of which follows:
“Reed College [where Steve Jobs enrolled for awhile] at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
Setting The Record Straight
A lot of people know that Benjamin Franklin did research on electricity. The silhouette of Franklin in a lightning storm with his kite flying and key dangling is emblazoned on the average American’s brain: the rugged individualist in pursuit of a dream, no matter the danger. But what almost nobody knows is that Franklin’s work on electricity was as a part of a team of co-equals. And that his signature was only one of several others’ that appeared upon publication of that work. But Franklin had the fame and got the credit. Sound familiar? History is a single-sentence thing.
A lone eagle, as an icon, works great. A flock of geese, not so much.
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Here’s a couple of articles to help put it all in perspective:
The Impact of Steve Jobs on Typography
Steve Jobs and Type: Connecting the Dots
And here, on Typophile.com, a bit of additional insight, debate, and perhaps a few ruffled feathers: Steve Jobs 1955-2011
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have read (an article in Wired) that Jobs invented the mouse, and everyone seems also to think that he was responsible for many other innovations. The only problem with all of this adulation is that it is — by his own admission — bogus.
All of these innovations — including WYSIWYG layout, multiple proportional typefaces, the mouse, the cursor, and in fact the whole desktop metaphor — were developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), where Jobs saw them.
While he deserves credit as a marketing genius, his reputation as a technical innovator is VASTLY overblown and undeserved. I was working on a Xerox AI workstation when the Mac was released, so I know whereof I speak: I was using a mouse to create documents with a choice of several proportional typefaces in a WYSIWYG document editor on a virtual desktop already, and didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Hi Jon,
All you say is true. The history is easy to find. All of the UI basics we associate with PCs – mouse, windows – came out of Xerox Parc. (Palo Alto Research Center) In one of the greatest corporate stumbles of the 20th Century, Xerox developed it all and then blew it.
A fascinating story, too.
As far as Jobs – from what I’ve read and I’ve read quite a bit – Jobs was not technical but he had an eye for it. He was picker-and-chooser in chief and that’s a skill not to be dismissed. In my previous life in the fashion biz, I worked briefly for a company – very small – where the two brothers who owned the company became quite wealthy because one of the brothers, who was embarrassingly uneducated, inarticulate, and a complete and utter prick too, was an absolute genius in picking and choosing what would sell. Put six new items in front of him, and he’d pick the winner.
It’s a talent.
BTW – the word I’ve come to think describes Jobs best is borrowed from the world of Opera. Jobs was an impresario.
Thanks for chiming in.
Rich