Think of what you want about Steve Jobs, at the end of the day people respect him for what he’s made. His impact is definitely noticed beyond his death (especially every single time you look at your iphone). You look into his past and you realize a lot of his success stems from one key moment – him going to Xerox Parc and stealing their graphical user interface idea. “Good artists copy, great artist steal” so they say. But THIEF is not the word you typically associate first when you hear Steve Jobs.
I am loving the book, “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon – which I haven’t finished yet but will soon. It’s a short read, full of deep simple truths. It’s a book I wish I discovered years ago. In it Austin says frankly, look, nothing is original. There are no self-made men, no geniuses, just people who “stole” from others, who were influenced by others and remixed their own ideas. It’s liberating in the sense that he encourages the reader to go ahead and embrace the influence of ideas, instead of running from it.
He writes “nobody is born with a style or voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.”
If I think back to when I started out as a designer, Steve Jobs was my hero. Charismatic, talented, radical, and bold – and the first “UX designer,” if I may be so bold. He was an aspirational figure even if I never a billion dollar computer company like him, I would like to say I did copy his love for design.
As I continue to grow as a designer (even with my 20+ years of experience) I am pondering who my heroes are these days. To be honest, not all the things I consume are design related. Some are related to psychology and productivity. How do they inspire me? What can I learn/steal from them? How can I mash these influences up? We are as Kleon writes, “the sum of your influences.”
For now, my job as Kleon says, is to collect good ideas. Learn to steal, to reverse engineer, to make things – before trying to figure yourself out. To me, that sounds perfect. I’ll start from there.