ArtCenter and Apple
Apple's longstanding love affair with design took root when Steve Jobs hired a few wildly talented ArtCenter designers. Their enduring impact has informed Apple's aesthetic identity and inspired the broader technology community to think differently about design's role in every product.
Steve Jobs compared the designers and engineers in the computer industry to the poets and painters of previous eras. In this video, we’ve gathered some of the key creative visionaries from Jobs' early brain trust of designers—all of whom happen to be ArtCenter Graphic Design alumni.
Not only did these designers establish Apple’s enduring aesthetic; they laid the foundation for the world’s most valuable company to also become Silicon Valley’s most design-driven consumer electronics empire. Watch how Clement Mok, Tom Suiter, Paul Pruneau and Liz Sutton instilled a commitment to prioritizing the user experience in all of Apple's business practices. And marvel at how their pioneering approach has since inspired the broader technology community to think differently about design's central role in every product, app and experience.
The packing system we created back then—Apple logo, beautiful photograph of the product on the front and back panels on white—has continued for the past thirty years. It was that simple aesthetic that Steve loved and we all thought was working and we just stuck to it.
Tom SuiterGraphic Design alum and former Apple Creative Director
I had a front row seat at the beginning of some pretty amazing changes and history is not going to come around that way again. I got to not only see the change but effect the change. ArtCenter definitely shaped who I am as a practitioner, built and gave me the confidence to be not only a designer but a design leader at Apple.
Clement Mok
Graphic Design alum and former Apple Creative Director
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