The New Idiom

Check out our handy dandy widget on the right sidebar of our blog to follow updates from DRC X live.

Who at ID (or Stuart, for that matter) hasn’t discussed Apple’s design, strategy, marketing, or business model in one (or probably, many more) of their classes? Steve had a profound impact on our community and we are truly sad to see him go. 

Here’s what people at ID have to say about the passing of a true design legend: 

I feel I owe my career to Steve Jobs. Not because his technologies have made the thinking and doing aspects of my work relatively seamless, although that’s true, but because he put design at the strategy table. And his products demonstrated the wisdom of that decision every time they launched. Apple shed light on the power of design and user experience, and that gave design a platform in the business world that didn’t exist before. I’ve been standing on that platform for 18 years. And while it’s true that when I bought my first iPhone, I was so delighted and persuaded that the future had (finally) arrived, it has been the access to problems and opportunities that didn’t have obvious links to design, and to executives who would not have considered giving designers a voice in their business that has really transformed my life. So, yes, iSad about says it all. 

The following is on display at Gensler, the architecture firm:

As a recent alumna of ID, l remember how every “best practice” example, every innovation framework, and every seminar held up the “Apple example,” to the point where people went, “oh please! We know Apple’s done it all.” Steve Jobs, as unschooled, untrained as he was, was a design thinker of our times, who in many instances articulated the unimaginable, achieving incredible finesse and skill in “conceiving the fog” and then cutting cubes out of it! The latter we all strive for. I haven’t felt this sad, for a long time. A loss for the design community.

Jobs had a hero’s journey - a unique birth, an apprenticeship (at the young age of 12 at Hewitt Packard), a quest, and the return. I just wish he was here a little longer. 

As designers who rely so often on technology, where might we be today without Steve? 

Slogging around in DOS 10.7? Hopefully not, though it is hard to imagine what our world would be like, had Apple’s (and Pixar’s) visionary leader not taken the path he did.

He brought a human side to technology, opening the door for mere mortals to more easily create, innovate, and inspire.  

My favorite tribute was David Pogue’s column in the New York Times.

I had the opportunity to meet Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple in college. He is an amazing guy. Here is his tearful remembrance of his friend.

I’ve been an Apple geek for life. Jobs was a large part of why I fell in love technology and design and why I am at ID today—hoping to learn what was simply so intuitive to him. 

Some of Steve’s greatest work. 

“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 other’s 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.” - From his inspiring Stanford graduation speech. 

We’ll update as we receive more. 

Have something to add? E-mail thenewidiom@gmail.com 

The New Idiom is running a t-shirt contest!

Design theme: What is the ID mascot? 

Contest instructions:

• Submit designs to thenewidiom@gmail.com in next 2 weeks (Illustrator .ai)
• Voting begins on the New Idiom on Friday, October 14
• Winner’s design will be sold on Spreadshirt (winner gets a free t-shirt and, of course, fame!)