考研阅读精选：设计与众不同
『史蒂夫·乔布斯的真正才华在于他的设计，他用出色、整洁，友好的产品外观重塑了我们的世界。』Design Different
设计与众不同
Oct 10th 2011 | from Newsweek
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When it came to design, Steve Jobs lived Apple’s “Think Different”mantra. Many major corporations use design to benefit their bottomlines, but Apple’s entire ethos was design. And it was hardwired inJobs. Even when he was heading NeXT, the educational-computer company hefounded, product and graphic design drove his strategy. He went so faras to get special dispensation from IBM to commission the NeXT logo fromPaul Rand, designer of the IBM, ABC, and Westinghouse logos. When Jobsreturned to Apple, he took its design to new levels, profoundlyinfluencing the look of 21st-century computer technology.
Apple products became designers’ best friends, forever altering thepractice of everything from graphic design to architecture by placingproduction power in the hands of creators. Jobs realized that creativepeople were not simply his primary customers, they were the willingpropagandists of the brand. He so keenly understood his end users, andtreated them with respect, that they went forth and exponentiallymultiplied.
Jobs integrated a range of designers into allaspects of the company—from hard- to software, from product to package,from corporate identity to advertising. He found roles for graphic,industrial, interior, and user-experience designers. But not asstylists. Jobs never slavishly reacted to the market’s fickle whims orwants; he accepted that his role was to educate people to the potentialof personal technology and enhance their appreciation of design. He useddesign to alter behavior and consequently altered his users’ behaviorthrough innovative design.
Unlike many other tech companies,design was the engine in Jobs’s world. Designers were not injected asforeign organisms into the middle or end of the conceptual andengineering process, after the engineers and marketers did themeaningful work. Rather, designers were involved at the outset as equalcreative partners. Form did not follow function; it was an integral partof the functional calculus. Jonathan Ive, Apple’s visionary productdesigner, didn’t just make boxes in which circuit boards and chips weretucked out of sight. He designed machines that were gateways tosatisfying, and often ecstatic, user experiences.
Jobs was anequal-opportunity design patron. He never distinguished, as many brandconglomerates do, between high and low design for high-end and low-endmarkets. One brand fit all. Apple did not hide a discount sub-brandbehind tasteless graphics—although fair discounts offered to educatorsand some professions were routinely available. Every customer got thesame logo, package, and product. Design was not used to mask shoddygoods or inflate prices. Jobs’s sense of quality was legend. Heinstilled his designers with extra pride. Likewise it was expected thatevery Apple customer would experience pride of ownership. From the boxesin which adapters and earbuds were sold to the look of the apps thatare now so ubiquitous, the end user expected the best, the clearest, thecleanest.
And what about those Apple stores? Part museum, part retail mall—with great shopping bags, too.
Rarely has design been so valued by a corporate CEO, and rarely isdesign’s value so inextricably tied to the reputation of a corporation.Jobs was a holistic designer—everything, everywhere, was designed well.And that is the essence of thinking different. (653 words)
文章地址：http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/09/design-different.html
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