Cheryl Durst, Hon. FIIDA, Executive Vice President and CEO of IIDA shares her thoughts on the passing of the visionary Steve Jobs and his great contributions to design.
I’m sure each one of us in the past 18 hours has read multiple tributes to Steve Jobs. What I find so intriguing is that many of us learned of his death while holding one of the very devices that he created. I’m not sure how he will ultimately be eulogized or remembered–there seems to be no shortage of uniquely personal stories about him, or about someone’s relationship with Apple or one of its products, or even how walking into an Apple Store changed how someone thought about technology, design, or the retail experience. Without a doubt, Steve Jobs wasn’t just the creator of a portfolio iconic products, or the founder of a company that defines “brand excellence” – he and Apple have in large part defined the 21st Century.
His life and his philosophy about business held firm to the fact that good design, matters. It matters socially, it matters economically, and it matters emotionally. He was vastly concerned with how human beings experienced an Apple product. He cared deeply about design, about integrity, about relevance and about the consumer experience.
As a CEO and visionary he ran Apple as a company that considered design, first; then performance. He also affirmed that Apple was about people—the people who created the product and the people who used the product. He could have easily been the “face of Apple” and appearing in countless ads, press releases, etc. Yet he didn’t. His appearances were rare and in fact, for many he was unrecognizable. Instead, he preferred to be the “mind” behind the company, and perhaps most importantly, he was the heart and soul of all that we know as Apple. Hearts, souls and minds are way more important than faces, any day of the week.
One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes is from his now famous commencement address at Stanford University: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
If you’ve ever clicked a mouse, sent a photo over the Internet, published your own book, created a movie from a home computer or enjoyed your favorite music downloaded as content on an elegant device that can do at least a dozen other things, or enjoyed the special magic of Toy Story, Buzz and Woody, then thank and remember Steve Jobs. He changed how design and its influence on the products of our lives is perceived, interpreted and appreciated.
[...] words about his influence, importance and role in the integration of technology and design and the impact on the world by the products he shaped. Many more words have been written about his management style and how demanding a leader he was, [...]