The point of this article isn't the damned turtleneck -- the lesson to learn is that Jobs was best friends with Issey Miyake. Think about that for a minute: How many other folks who work in tech in the valley have any friends who even work in fashion design? Add to that that this is the same guy who hired Paul Rand the grandfather of American graphic design to come up with the logo for NeXT. This is also the same man who hired I. M. Pei as an architect and powered the team that made the first computer animated motion picture. You can start to see why none of his peers even come close...
I had a completely different take on the article. I think the real lesson is Jobs was on a constant quest to learn/adopt from the best. Many of his future breakthroughs were the result of visiting places like Xerox PARC or learning from visionaries like Akio Morita.
It reinforces my view that Steve Jobs' brilliance was his ability to piece together seemingly disparate observations/lessons (in a mosaic theory like fashion) into a single game changing vision.
He even hired Rand to do the logo for his private foundation, which he didn't even really care about. I found that kind of shocking; it is a move on par with having a typeface designed for your personal blog.
Interesting.. I had never heard that, or anything about the Steven P. Jobs Foundation at all really. Now I'm curious to see the logo but I'm not having much luck finding it.
Jobs paid Rand $100k for the NeXT brand identity, and Rand created a 100 page brochure detailing the brand.
Jobs on working with Rand: “I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.’”
There's an entire book devoted to how he came up with the NeXT logo; you get to watch the design evolve. The book was probably published by NeXT itself; good luck finding one. I somewhat regret not "borrowing" the copy I saw lying around a computer lab at school.
Paul Rand was hired to design the logo for 50k, with the following rules: he would ask some questions concerning the mission of NEXT, and then he would leave. There will be no updates, no revisions, no meetings. he will return with a logo and if it is accepted, another 50k would be paid to him.
Mr. Rand returned with this small brochure (not the 100+ page document that is written about all over the net.. i think people got the 100 from the price of the logo design). This NEXT logo brochure really brings you into the mind of a great designer. Steve Jobs was so overtaken by this proposal, that he asked Mr. Rand if he could make copies... to use as marketing material to potential investors.
fascinating. this sort of "take it or leave it because i know better than you do what you really want" attitude is very reminiscent of apple's. it's nice to know that jobs could deal with people who saw things the same way he did.
If someone had a font designed for their personal blog (or book or whatever), it might be because they are really proud of the blog (or book &c.). Or it might be because they really like font design.
I appreciate your point and I'm not trying to undermine it, but there are a lot of tech people in certain realms of fashion. For instance, many people that are into the 'avant garde' style of dress, popularized by brands like Rick Owens, Julius, and Carol Christian Poell come from technical backgrounds. Just an interesting counterpoint.
The point of the article is not the turtlenecks or who Steve Jobs knew. The point is that Steve Jobs was unique and followed his own path. Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day?? Most people wouldn't and would fear they would get laughed at for doing so.
But Steve was unique. Wearing the same clothes every day made sense for Steve and that is why Steve did that, period. He wasn't concerned about fashion or trends or what others thought - he did what he felt was right. Period.
That's the answer. At some point in our career, most of us end up wearing some kind of "uniform."
I used to work for a engineering consulting firm. Kevin, the star engineer would wear polo shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. Everyone one else at his level and above wore suit and tie.
One day the new boss told Kevin that he needed to wear a button down shirt, suit and tie to meet with the client. Kevin told him "You can't make me wear a suit and tie. My clients don't care what I wear." The simple moral of the story was clear: "if you make it rain, you make the rules."
OTOH, he wore jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt every day. He was hardly a rebel.
Well, Sorry at some places. Making it rain won't change anything. Heck, you may make it storm, or cause a earth quake to to happen or even a make Volcano to explode.
Some workplaces are so strict about dress codes, they just won't change for any reason. Especially large corporate bureaucracies. They have a crazy like beliefs that dressing in some way will help their business more than actual work will.
And going against those norms actually will work against you.
Surprisingly, most large corporate bureaucracies, except for finance, don't have a dress code. I've seen more dress codes in the medium sized companies.
I used to do that when I was ceo of a company. I had a blue jeans and white button down shirt uniform, but, I didn't even know it - I was just so focused on the products. I must of had 20 of each. One day we had a company meeting and everyone came to the meeting in my uniform. It was hilarious and awesome. And that's when I found out.
"IBM officials often tried to accomodate Apple and vice versa so that both could comfortably work in unison. One popular anecdote talks of one of the first meetings between the two computer giants. IBM engineers dressed in blue jeans for the meeting, while Apple engineers dressed in suits. They both tried to make each other feel compfortable by conforming to what they thought the other was like."
But Steve was unique. Wearing the same clothes every day made sense for Steve and that is why Steve did that, period. He wasn't concerned about fashion or trends or what others thought - he did what he felt was right. Period.
I applaud that, but it hardly makes anyone unique. More than a few people have decided that, for example, a white t-shirt and blue jeans every day is a simple solution to a ultimately unimportant decision. Lots of people , OTOH, just wear whatever is nearest because they really don't give a crap about their appearance and they're happy that way.
There are real reasons to consider Jobs special. Hyperventilating over what amounts to a not-uncommon solution to dressing oneself trivializes him.
Uh... there are plenty of techies who wear the same clothes every day (sometimes literally), who do it because it feels right for them, and who aren't concerned about fashion or trends. Jobs is hardly unique in the 'I don't care' fashion stakes among techies. Period.
Jobs wasn't unconcerned with fashion. If he was, then he would wear any damn thing that was in his closet.
He made a dedicated effort to create a fashion "brand" to the point that people know what kind of sneakers he wore.
Jobs might not have been a great engineer or techie, but he was a great visionary, designer, and marketer. He created (and recreated) one of the greatest brands in America. I don't doubt he applied the same principles to his wardrobe as he did to his company.
Exactly. It is a mistake to think that Jobs had not thought carefully about the clothes he wore - it's just that his approach to clothing was the same as his approach to technology - he seems to have believed that there was an optimal set of clothes for him, and that any deviation would simply mean that he wasn't wearing the best clothes for his purposes. Much like the discussions raging over the fact that the iPhone screen size hasn't varied at all - one size has been deemed optimal, and deviations from that size mean that the product must by definition be suboptimal.
>> person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day??
Paul Barnett, who was a lead video game designer for Warhammer Online. He wore the same clothes everyday for convenience (going out and purchasing a set of shirts/jeans/shoes in a single stroke) - which he would then change on a yearly/6monthly basis.
What I got from the story is a confirmation of what I already suspected. Steve Jobs basically created Sony 2. He hinted numerous times on how he modeled everything he did with apple was based on sony. He made Sony, but did it right.
That is truly what set Jobs apart. His left and right side of the brain were constantly in bed together while those of his peers (and dare I say most techies today) were satisfied with self-pleasure.
