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Apple - the spirit of Design


As a person who's intrigued by the "Occupy" protests, I was surprised by how much the passing of Steve Jobs saddened me. Why don't I lump Apple into one of those corporations extracting too much from the public and giving little back?

As a graphic artist and fine art enthusiast, Apple embodies the spirit of design in every aspect of its products and promotions. Beautiful lines, simplistic design and functionality, and above all white space! The shell of every Apple product is a designer's dream. But not simply judging a book by its cover; every product also functions with such ease, the way a design tool should. I work on PC's, as I tell people "begrudgingly." Working on a Mac prior to every touching a PC, leads to many frustrations for me. Quick keys that are all but non existent on a PC, poor ability to properly name files, and functions that assume what you intend to do, only to be wrong. These errors in PC judgement cause the operator to go back and correct what the computer decided to do. Those list just the start of the annoying functions on a PC. The simplicity of Apple's beautiful visuals in conjunction with needed functionality is the true definition of a good design. While Apple's one button mouse is elegant, it's not always needed with all the command keys that are consistent from operating system to software speeding up your work with simply a keyboard and giving you two options to work as best suited to you. Apple does not think for me, it allows me to determine what I want to name a file, what text I want to select, and where I want to store things.

Learning of Steve Job's education and decisions about starting the Apple business, made me appreciate him as an artist over computer tech or CEO even more. Computer and software engineers may never have embraced the artistry of fonts, if it weren't for his insistence to incorporate them into his computer after his experience in calligraphy classes and appreciation for fonts. There are technical people perfect at figuring out code and networks and there are creative people finding ever-increasing ways to make our multi-media experience pleasing to the senses. Normally I would state my case on how these two kinds of jobs should be separated, and there would be more jobs in these fields for everyone. But Steve Jobs was uniquely a tech person concerned with design. It is rare, and with his success, understandable why so much focus has remained on him after his death.

The future of design has hints of thumbs-up like comments overwhelming any true content or pleasing presentation, stuffed into a pre-formatted template design automatically run by content management systems. Apple has kept that future only a threat. I hope Wall Street doesn't swallow up Apple and demand it to perform to market margins instead of design standards. I hope that Apple sticks to the foundations it's established, and that we have not witnessed the end of beauty in design and function in our techie lives. I hope Steve Job's spirit will live on and give technological design an unending life.

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