Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) is the undisputed master of aesthetic design when it comes to technology-related products. To Jobs, aesthetics was defined as something that both looked and functioned perfectly. The sheer beauty and simplicity of his Apple products will go down in history as some of the most brilliant designs mankind has ever seen - up their with other great artists such as Picasso and Divinci.
Steve Jobs aesthetic obsession carried all the way through his products form the inside out. He was meticulous about designing beauty into his products - even inside the computer where only repair people would notice! This was fostered at a young age when his father honed this attention to detail by ensuring that the wood at the back of a cabinet they were constructing as a father-son project was just as sturdy and aesthetically-pleasing as the front.
Some might say Jobs took it a little too far when he refused to buy furniture for his mansion because none of the designs met his standards. He was infamous for only wanting the best: finest automobiles and motorcycles with smooth contours (he drove Mercedes), Tiffany lamps with classical designs, and Issey Miyake sweaters which gave him his signature turtleneck and blue jeans style. He even carried this over to family decisions where him and his wife would spend weeks deciding on a washer and dryer that met their standards.
Steve Jobs also demanded perfection from people and developed a kind of "business aesthetics", whereby people are artificially raised to higher quality of work that they never thought was possible. Jobs would reject and criticize inferior work and publicly humiliate the underling in front of their peers. Afraid that this might happen again, the worker would strive day and night to appease Jobs.
Is perfection an idea or something tangible that we can eventually reach if we work tirelessly day and night? Who defines perfection - is it subjective or objective? The masses have voted with their dollars that the products Steve Jobs and his team at Apple have designed reach the pinnacles of desire. Their designs are timeless and have been copied again and again by their competition (iPhone, iPad). Whatever the case may be, Steve Jobs was a true master at aesthetics and made us re-think technology as something that can be just as pleasing to look at as it is to operate.
- LB
