I designed this text mosaic of the Apple logo for Steve Jobs. I was really sad when I found out he died. I thought about doing something to celebrate his amazing life and contributions to our world. Most of my ideas were pretty cheesy. So I did nothing. This idea however seemed kinda cool to me. I used Wordle (awesome) for part of it, got some text from Wikipedia and then filled in the blanks in Adobe Illustrator.
My life was forever changed in 1987 when I saw my first Macintosh. I was 16 years old living in Los Angeles and working for my dad at his executive recruiting office by LAX. At the time I was still an old school graphic designer using Letraset rub on letter transfers, graphic pens and rulers. There wasn’t any point in using any of the PCs we had at the office for graphics, it was still a C: *.* situation. In the lobby of our office building was a copy shop we used almost everyday. One day I noticed something new, a computer. I had never seen anything like it! A color screen and some sort of click box connected via a cord (a mouse). I asked my buddy who worked there, “what the hell is that?” He said “that is a Macintosh II”. “A who?” I replied. He said that it was a new computer that was great for what I was doing, graphics. He also said it was available to rent for customers that wanted to layout their own business cards, brochures or whatever. It was running a program called Pagemaker. I instantly fell in love.
- my first Mac, yes I still have it
In 1992 I got my first Mac, a black and white Performa 200! I was so damn excited! I started doing graphics for people and in 1993 I started my company I.D.E.A. (re-named Eyeidea in ’95). The Mac made sense, it worked like I thought. It made things possible I had only dreamed of designing. Of course as the years went by there were some scary times, Apple always on the verge of bankruptcy, applications difficult or impossible to get. But I was now forever a diehard Mac lover. In 1999 I wrote a letter to Apple just to say… I believe in you, don’t give up! They sent me a thank you letter and an “Apple Forever” t-shirt! In 2002 I put my money where my hope was and invested in Apple stock. I should have bought more lol! But I invested because I believed in Apple. I still do. Phil, Tim, Scott, Bob and of course Jonathan are visionaries just like Steve was.
I found out about Steve’s death on my iPhone while having a cup of coffee with a friend. I knew he was sick obviously but there was always hope. I figured with all the money he had there would be a miracle no matter the cost. But Steve like all of us was just human. My heart sank when I got the text from my fiance about his death. I apologized to my friend and said I needed to go. In the car, some tears. Steve was our underdog leader. He was as obsessed with design as the rest of us designers. He got excited about things just like us, he knew what was lame and how things should be. He attracted the best people in the world, that is why Apple today is what it is. I bought Apple stock again the other day for the same reason I bought it in 2002, I believe in Apple.
Thank you Steve, rest in peace in the big Apple in the sky!
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Steve’s Apple by Chad J.W. Anderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
