To learn from the history of the recent past, one needs a strong filter. The accumulated cruft of modern life means that most people’s legacies will be buried deep beneath the digital detritus of day-to-day life. The Steve Jobs Archive was launched in autumn 2022 as a repository for the life, work, writings and correspondence of the late Apple CEO.
Make Something Wondeful (photo courtesy of SJA, cover design by LoveFrom)
The website’s minimal interface was shaped by Work & Co, and offers up curated snapshots of Jobs’ thought processes, from speeches, interviews, writings and letters. Whereas most archives focus on the physical ephemera of a life or lives, the Steve Jobs Archive is explicitly about ideas, and how they gestate, emerge, and evolve upon contact with other ideas.
Make Something Wonderful is the archive’s first conventional publication, albeit with a twist. Taking a carefully selected number of Jobs’ speeches, interviews, and correspondence, the physical book sets them out in a uniquely immersive format. The design team behind the physical book is none other than LoveFrom, the post-Apple consultancy that Sir Jony Ive established.
Steve's passport (photo courtesy of SJA). 'Steve's passport, spring 1973. He was eighteen.'
However, that version of the book is for Apple, Disney and Pixar employees only, making it an instant, limited-edition collectible. For the web publication, which will be made free to access from 11 April 2023, Ive and his team have taken another tack, splicing the dynamic accessibility of online design with the craft and detail of print. A ribbon of text can be zoomed into freely, a format that deploys the typographic precision that Jobs was so invested in. The online book uses the studio’s own LoveFrom Serif, combined with fullscreen images and a discrete right-hand scrollbar for chronological navigation.
Make Something Wonderful cover polaroid (photo courtesy of SJA), date circa 1976
The reading experience is designed to be fluid and immersive, regardless of the subject matter. It spans speeches, interviews, writings, and notes, along with candid emails from behind the scenes, whether negotiating his return to Apple, negotiating on behalf of Pixar or just offering everyday tech support. In addition to the web format, a conventional eBook (not designed by LoveFrom), will be made available on Apple Books. Edited by writer and historian Leslie Berlin, executive director of the Steve Jobs Archive, the book also has an introduction by Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.
Steve asleep on airplane (photo by Jean Pigozzi). 'Exhausted after a sales conference in New Orleans, 1984'
Jobs is often hailed as a visionary who saw the potential of technology to change people's lives, while being unafraid to take risks – both personal and corporate – in order to bring his ideas to life. Make Something Wonderful is a journey into his mind.
‘Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words’, will be available from 11 April 2023 at stevejobsarchive.com/book and Apple Books, with other platforms to be announced soon
LoveFrom, LoveFrom.com
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