Apple’s first designer

Speaking of Apple, here’s a profile of Jerry Manock, who worked for Apple from 1977 to 1984 and designed the case for the Apple II and helped design the Macintosh. Manock was Jobs’ first Jony Ive.

The whole basis of the class I’ve taught at UVM for 21 years is … integrated product development, which means concurrently looking at all of these things: the aesthetics, the engineering, the marketing … which is what we were doing at Apple. Not necessarily purposefully, but everybody was just thrown together… I would walk through the software place and look around and see what people were doing … walk through the marketing area. I had my drawings all on the walls, so anybody could come up. There was a red pencil hanging there. I’d say, “If you see something you don’t like, or is a problem — I don’t care whether it’s a janitor or Steve — write the correction, circle it, put your phone there and I’ll call you and we’ll talk about it.”

(thx, mike)

• Apple
• design
• Jerry Manock
• Steve Jobs