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"Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and
by joezydeco 11y ago
"Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them"
- Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford University, June 2005
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
- j2kun 11y agoAnd that's why we love Steve Wozniak more.
- dominotw 11y agoNot really
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThe real useful advice behind this is basically "know a lot of random stuff". But people end up focusing on the "calligraphy" aspect and fetishizing focus on the less practical.
- Apocryphon 11y agoAnd yet, the modern Apple that prizes good aesthetics and design in the service of the customer is what separates it from competing tech companies that focus on the practical and profitable.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoDoing this requires taste, and taste doesn't seem to require an arts degree (on the contrary, what I see arts department producing nowadays is basically making a point through lack of taste). BTW. My knowledge of typography, as well as data-related graphics design and organizing skills have improved quite a lot just a year or two ago. It was not because of going to an arts school, it's because I stumbled upon Tufte's books while procrastinating on HN. The point being, learning random stuff is random. (If we want to improve it, then maybe let's introduce a "quick overview of a lot of completely random stuff" course in STEM classes.)
- Natsu 11y agoWhat about Donald Knuth and TeX? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX
- dalke 11y agoIt's also part of the well-known Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. It's simply not believable that no future PC OS would have ignored 'beautiful typography' had Jobs not taken that course.