Ode to Steve: Steve Jobs Day, October 14, 2011

iMiss You.

Today, October 14, is Steve Jobs Day. About a week earlier, the couple days after Steve Jobs' death, one of my librarian colleagues came to my office to tell me he had heard about a Dress Like Steve Jobs Day coming sometime soon, but didn't know exactly when. I thought that was a pleasant way for the masses to honour the former founder and CEO of Apple's memory. A few days after receiving my first notice the tribute day was coming, my librarian colleague took time out of his busy day while preparing to open a new library branch to phone me: "Scot, I just found out tomorrow is Steve Jobs Day." Fortunately, my own ubiquitous black mock turtleneck shirt and blue jeans were easily at hand back home.


You can find out more about Steve Jobs Day and the Dress Like Steve Jobs Day event at the links below:


Steve Jobs Day
http://stevejobsday2011.com/index.php


Steve Jobs Day
www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=167358663346841


Dress Up Like Steve Jobs Day
www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130179840411684


Steve Jobs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs


Steve Jobs Greatest Achievements
www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/steve-jobs-greatest-achievements/?mbid=wir_newsltr&pid=2452


And my personal favourite web site about Steve that includes links to YouTube videos of interest:
http://allaboutstevejobs.com

Thinking about Steve at my desk.

Prior to even knowing about these events, I already had printed out a photo of Steve and pinned it to my bulletin board at my desk at work. It provided a reminder that gave me pause to think on my own experience using Apple products. 


I was a graphic designer in 1986 when the Mac Classic came to the market. The company I worked for, the Dallas Times Herald, made a big push to begin use off-the-shelf computer products to create computer-generated art in its newspaper. The transition from using rapidiograph pens on vellumn paper, waxing galleys of text to blue line mechanicals, and cutting rubylith and amberlith films for colour separations took time, but we were all about finding ways to do our job faster, easier, and with more efficiency. Apple products made that possible, and as they continued to improve on their products, so did I. The largest portion of my design work has been created on Apple products; all of my industry awards are a direct result of using products Steve Jobs had a hand in creating. So I have a lot to thank Apple--and by extension--Steve Jobs for. A lot has been said about Steve's visionary instincts for developing products, masterful abilities as a marketeur, personal leadership style, and more. I can't add more to that, so I offer the collection of references above for your enjoyment and appreciation of a man that made a HUGE difference in the world.


But wait, there's one more thing.


www.apple.com/stevejobs

Windows To The World

A view from my office into the back courtyard of the Headquarters Library.

Like many people in my business, I've had my share of doing the musical chair scene, cycling myself through whatever creative studios, agencies, and publishing houses allowed me, while I gouged out my career like some giant, lumbering glacier that carved its way through the mountains until it reached its final resting place and disolved into the sea.

Along the way, my office accommodations have run the gamut: from working on a slab of thick glass I straddled between two filing cabinets to make a desk out of while freelancing in my spare bedroom-turned studio; to having my head poke up out of a cubicle amid a vast sea of other cubicles for a major corporation's in-house creative department; to working on a state-of-the-art networked computer system in a private office on the 44th floor of a skyscraper in New York CIty's Rockefeller Center.

Some of my more memorable workplace windows included views directly down into the heart of Times Square; a view into Central Park through a sliver of light between two condominium towers; even a most impressive, expansive, view of the Empire State Building and lower Manhattan from a high rise in midtown. And for offices that didn't have the greatest of views, I was only steps away from such memorable places as Thanksgiving Square in downtown Dallas, New York City's Union Square, Singapore's Chinatown, or Bangkok, Thailand's bustling Plonchit Road and associated side streets---all choked with both street food vendors and vehicle exhaust fumes. Ahhh, those were the days.

Nowadays, my office at the Headquarters Library for the Alachua County Library District looks out through six floor-to-ceiling colonial style windows into the back courtyard of the library. It is a peaceful, quiet, and calming view of flowering bushes, short palms, and creek-side trees with Spanish moss hanging from their branches. I fully open the blinds in my office to let the light flow in, and---because they face north---I can get good, ambient light and avoid the sweltering and harsh, direct light that the southern facing sides of the building get. My office view is the kind one would want to see from their sun room (or as they call their screened-in back porches down here, their "Florida Room"). And since I literally have no view from my own personal residence, my office windows do a lot of making up for that deficiency.

I occasionally wonder which of the many windows were the best I ever had. It's a tough call. But I'd have to say that on views alone, I'd take a serene view of nature like this one any day over the bustling, noisy streets of the big city. This way, I can literally say that I made it over to the other side where the grass is greener.

That being said, however, sometimes I just wished my windows could open.