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Steve Jobs leaves a void in the world of store design
Steve Jobs’ death last week was treated by some of the media like the loss of a holy man. I’m not sure poor Ann Curry of “The Today Show” can handle many more of these reports. She gets so intensely ... somber.
But you do have to acknowledge the enormous influence Jobs had on our culture. Nearly every way we communicate with each other (except perhaps by face-to-face conversation) has been changed by his visit to our planet.
I have no understanding at all about computer technology – or how Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and all those other 1970s Silicon Valley boys unlocked the magic of microchips.
But retailing I get. And much as Jobs changed the way we live, he also changed the way we shop. Randall Stone of Lippincott called Apple and Jobs “this decade’s game-changer, in the way Les Wexner at Limited and Gordon Segal at Crate & Barrel once changed their sectors.” (One difference: You don’t need a Genius Bar to explain how stemware works.)
Jobs, Wexner, Segal, Sam Walton, Howard Schultz, Richard Hayne, John Mackey – they all understood their brands because they’d created them, and they knew how to express that essence in the marketplace.
And they were obsessive! Did you know that the sleep indicator light on the MacBook is timed to glow at an adult’s average breathing rate of 12 breaths per minute? Jobs saw the function behind the design behind the function! It didn’t matter if only he saw it. It still permeated the entire Apple experience.
I’ve heard he was a GC’s nightmare. He insisted on only the right marble for a countertop. He fixated on the color grains in granite. And he connected all those design details to his customers. It wasn’t just building a neat store. It was building a store that engaged the Apple shopper and represented the Apple brand.
People found themselves flocking to Apple – the stores and the brand – to become part of the community that just seemed to be cooler than everyone else.
The Apple bullpen has people who can develop the next, better iSomething. After all, Jobs had been ill for a couple of years and the products kept coming. But is there that visionary with the instincts, passion and commitment to what turns shoppers on? Someone who will not simply roll out more glass staircases, but will anticipate exactly when something else could become the architectural representation of the brand?
What will we rave about in this next decade if not Apple’s retail genius? Visionaries are not in long supply. If they were, we wouldn’t be spending all this time talking about Steve Jobs.
I'm usually a contrarian, but that's almost impossible to do in this case. Tough to be anything but overwhelmingly positive.
What strikes me most about the Jobs' retail achievement, and really, all of his creations, is the simplicity. Da Vinci said, "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", and that notion really shines through with the Apple stores and products. Such clear, powerful product display, so easy to use, so many people to help, so great to return to, such wonderful, useful graphics -- customer accolades like that have made the Apple stores the envy of every retailer and every store designer since their inception. And then, to top it off, $4200 per square foot. 10 times the retail average! The customer has spoken in terms any retailer would understand.
I would think a natural would be to say that he'll be missed, but really, if we've all been paying attention, the lesson should be learned. Let's pay homage with our clients (who would certainly love the $psf!).
In 2001 we would have never predicted that a consumer electronics brand would someday be the ultimate benchmark of outstanding retail. Apple led by Steve Jobs broke the paradigm of retailing at a time when it needed to be revisited. The days of themed retail were fleeting. Niketown, Warner Brother Stores and of course Disney stores where quickly loosing relevance with the new consumer. Steve Jobs retail experience was just that an experience, simple crisp, easy and exciting. No different than the products he developed. Steve was not necessarily a great retail designer what he was a great designer. He looked at his retail stores as products. Make them intuitive, make the modern and simple but most of all make them engaging. This is an important point of differentiation for many stores are showcases for the products but Steve saw them differntly
A few days before his death, I had the fortunate opportunity to visit and be given a tour of the Covenant Garden Apple Store. I had been there before and each time I confess that today, right now, that particular store is the best retail in the world. It has transcended all ideas of retailing and become what we profess often a destination; a community center where buying the product is only a souvenir of your experience. This wasn‘t a typical store as part of the historic registry the shell was a given. There were other requirements that all the materials had to be source from the UK. So the wood of the tables are not from Canada but English oak, the floor tiles are not from the mountain in Italy owned by Apple but English slate and the signature glass was not from Germany but locally fabricated. What was created was something so elegant, beautiful and so subtle and nuanced.
What Steve Jobs taught us about retail is that nothing should ever be the same but consistency is paramount, that shopping isn’t complicated just intuitive, and that your store needs the same confidence as your products. As designer, consumer, and simple human I can Steve Jobs taught me things every day about how to think, to create and most importantly how to experience the world we live in.
I feel fortunate that I lived during his time but I don’t worry there will be another Steve Jobs, visionary renegade. I know this because like Steve was inspired by so many influences he has inspired the next generation genius to come.
Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach and most recently Public bikes, had this to say about Steve Jobs: "If there were a silver lining to Steve Jobs’ passing, it would be the numerous discussions about the value (spiritual and financial) of good design in our culture. Jobs did something that no one else had ever done: he made great design mainstream."
For more, read Forbes' blog here.
From Jim Crawford, principal at Taberna Retail, executive director of the Global Retail Executive Council, and VMSD Contributor
The death of Steve Jobs is a huge blow to the technology industry and is echoing personally through the vast majority of the people I know. While we’re all feeling the loss in terms of the impact Jobs has had on all the devices many of us have used for the last 20 years of our lives (#sentfrommyiphone is a simple, powerful tribute appended to many posts and tweets about his death), those of us in retail have another reason to celebrate Steve’s impact on our industry – and those of us in retail design, even more so.
Steve Jobs didn’t just bring us the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. He brought us the Apple Store, the most lauded, most cited, most imitated and, one might even argue, most influential retail store concept of the past decade. At last month’s IRDC conference in San Francisco, I jokingly suggested that I’d love to see a conference presentation that didn’t reference the Apple Store as the paragon of design, service, product display, etc. And as adamantly as I believe that the adoration of the Apple Store is, at times, a little bit over the top, you simply can’t deny the profound way in which it changed how we think about shopping for technology.
And for those of us who live passionately at the intersection of technology and design, for all the accusations of fan-boy status, and for all the times we had to struggle to get our computers connected to corporate networks, Apple products truly epitomized the fusion of form and function. I have never seen another brand that has consistently created beautiful, functional products that are simple and powerful to use.
I’ve had an off and on professional relationship with Apple for 18 years, since the multimedia company I founded in 1993 earned our coveted Apple Developer status. I’m proud to have been associated with the company and to have had the opportunities to engage with Apple in its retail presence as well. Embrace or eschew the Macintosh, it’s a great company that creates some great products.
Apple is a constant reminder for all of us on the tech side of things of how to get it right when it comes to new products. The day the iPad was launched, I went out and bought a Nook at Barnes & Noble. My thinking was “well, if it doesn’t play Flash and have all the features I want from my laptop, why do I want anything besides an e-reader?” Fast forward a year an a half and I can’t imagine my life without my iPad.
Jobs didn’t just create products, he created categories. From the iPod and the MacBook Air to the iPhone and iPad, Apple defined both the benchmark and the market. And while imitation by Samsung may not have been the sincerest form of flattery, it was Jobs’ innovation with the iPad that led to the news that may get lost today: India will begin selling tablets for $22 to schools, bringing Jobs’ vision of tablet computing to those who never could have dreamed of affording it until now.
Thank you, Steve Jobs, for the profound impact you’ve made on my personal life, my professional domain and my industry. You’ll be sorely missed even as we all continue trying to live up to your legacy of technology innovation and design excellence.
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On Thursday, the day after Steve Jobs passed away I was mindlessly wandering past the Apple store near Union Square in San Francisco on my way to the dentist. As I approached, I noticed a gathering on the sidewalk in front of the store and immediately realized what I was witnessing. A makeshift shrine to Jobs was quickly growing - Post-it notes with handwritten messages covered the glass storefront, flowers + candles lined the sidewalk, and photos of Jobs were layered among the collection of tangible grief. I was unexpectedly overcome with emotion...just sadness at the loss of such an innovative, brilliant visionary who changed the world in such an extreme way.
Apple, under Jobs oversight, presented for the first time, impeccably designed technology to the masses. Has any one brand brought design awareness (and possibly elevated a design consciousness) to the admittedly non-design savvy consumer as successfully as Apple? The visual impact of the Apple stores isn't just the clean lines and simple use of materials and fixturing that define store design. It is the complete vision of Jobs that seemlessly integrated the store architecture and furnishings with Apple products as if the eyes and hands of one artist created the whole package. They are one with one another and with the visiting consumer.
Jobs broke retail rules. If a store footprint didn't match the design grid, he built interior demising walls that did despite hidden "wasted" space. The ratio of sales associates to customers far outnumbers the average formula. The negative space around each placed interactive Apple product isn't found in any other consumer electronics store.
Innovative, brilliant, visionary, unconventional, rule breaker...we can all learn a lesson from Steve Jobs.
Michael Bodziner
Principal, Gensler