In How Steve Jobs’ Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution, aside from his difficult personality, Water Isaacson supports Steve Jobs’ atypical career trajectory and passion for deeply understanding products. Jobs’ path and drive allowed him to “build a company that became the greatest force for innovative design– and the best proof of its importance– in our time”.
“To be truly simple, you have to go really deep”. Jobs understood that in order to simplify any product, it is important to understand everything about it and how it is manufactured. Although Jobs dropped out of college, he continued to audit classes that genuinely interested him and pertained to his future goals, such as calligraphy. “It was yet another example of Jobs consciously positioning himself at the intersections of the arts and technology”. This allowed him to find fonts that supported his vision of a technology that appeared friendly.
Although some argued against Jobs’ approach, where design dictated engineering rather than vice versa, “design is integral to what makes us great”. It is imperative to who we are because design is inspired by human needs. Innovation is driven by what we currently need to survive, thrive and keep creating. An engineer becomes a part of this process after the need is established. Steven Jobs takes this to a whole new extreme to create the most approachable and satisfying technological design inside and out.
Technology can be intimidating at first glance. Steve Jobs was determined to completely remove every part that provoked this intimidation factor and replace it with a machine that appeared “friendly”. The only way to do this was to completely deconstruct a technological design to the bare bones. Then, remove every material part that caused this discomfort and replace it with designs that appeared welcoming, in this case, as a human face. Jobs’ obsession with appearance and his certainty on human needs created a snowball effect and eventually a company that achieved a perfectly artistic and engineered technological masterpiece.