There was a time when I considered myself to be one of the people commonly known as Apple fanboys. And this despite the fact that the only products with an Apple logo on the back that I ever owned were exclusively iPods and iPhones. Nevertheless, I’ve held the brand and the lifestyle associated with it in the highest regard. Apple was synonymous for the creatives, for the artists and, above all, for freethinkers. Their products were excitingly different and always light years ahead of everyone else’s.
I will probably always remember that sleepless night right before the delivery of my very first iPod. Unlike today, Apple’s handheld devices still had premium packaging back then. And the unboxing was an absolute experience! Gosh how many countless nights have I spent deeply occupied with my well-curated iTunes library. And whenever one of Steve Jobs’ legendary keynotes was just around the bend, I was always buzzing in anticipation. It was also that time when I started designing custom covers for my first iPod Video, so in a way, you could say Apple is partly responsible for this blog here (and probably its design as well).
Still, a lot of time has passed since then and many things have changed. My enthusiasm from back then has given way to an adult sense of reason, and Apple has shed the misfit mentality of its earlier days to become the biggest tech company in the world.
And yet, sometimes I miss that special feeling… the excitement of something new…. how the sunlight gets reflected in the translucent white surface of a new iPod… the touch and the sound of a click-wheel… or the motion-sensitive volume knob in iOS6, whose metallic texture shimmers when you tilt the iPod… it’s the little, passionate details like these that made me love Apple.
In a way, this spirit of the Apple brand has died with Steve Jobs.
Over the course of two years American author, journalist, and professor Walter Isaacson has written a very intimate and honest biography of Jobs, based on numerous interviews with him and his family, friends, colleagues and competitors. The book, simply titled Steve Jobs, served as the basis for the film’s 3-act screenplay, which was adapted by Aaron Sorkin, known for such acclaimed works as The Social Network or Moneyball. For Steve Jobs, Sorkin made frequent use of a storytelling technique called “walk and talk”, in which a number of characters have a conversation while walking somewhere.
Overall I really enjoyed the movie! It has great dialogue and some absolutely fantastic performances – no comparison to that weird TV movie starring Ashton Kutcher. But I can’t help thinking about what it could have been! Apparently David Fincher was in talks to direct for Sony Pictures, with Christian Bale(!) in the lead role. But he asked for too high of a budget and total control over the film marketing (I wonder why?), which ultimately led to Sony to drop the project entirely. Considering how great Fincher’s “facebook movie” ended up being, and the fact that he’s a similarly eccentric visionary as Steve Jobs was, this had the potential to become something truly amazing.
But it’s also unfair to compare an existing film to a hypothetical one. That’s why I don’t want to dwell too much on the “what ifs” and instead praise Danny Boyle, who has done a great job, turning a talky script into a tight and compelling film. And he also brought us a wonderful score by the very versatile Daniel Pemberton, who adopted the 3-act structure from Aaron Sorkin and composed a different style of music for each sequence of the film.
This project had been sitting on my desk for a long time without any real progress. All I had managed to do was cut out Michael Fassbender from a film still. But after that, nothing worked and I lacked ideas or inspiration for months.
At some point I came up with the idea of recreating old, iconic Apple ad campaigns and after a few extensive days of research, the old creative engine was up and running again. So, apart from two very colourful creations of my own (#3, #4), I mainly did what I love to do most and that is recreating existing designs in meticulous detail. Starting with Apple’s authentic font design, I made my way through the entire history of Apple’s famous advertising campaigns and recreated numerous concepts, beginning from the print ads of the very first Macintosh (#6) over to the legendary “Think Different” campaign (#8, #9) up until the first iPod billboard ads (#10).
Speaking of, the iPods in general were a major priority for me in this collection; after all these are custom covers for a music album, so it was only natural to recreate some of the promotional material for the world’s most iconic portable media player. I included covers based on the iPod classic (#10, #11, #13, #14), iPod nano (#15, #16), iPod shuffle (#12) and the iPod touch (#17). And in case you haven’t noticed, I also manually reassembled the entire graphical user interface in each of these iPod covers. Only then I was able to add all those small details and references that bring a lot of joy to me and hopefully to you as well.
HQCovers 