“Looking across the water from the Hog Island Oyster Company in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, you can see the Bay Bridge as it heads toward Treasure Island, Oakland and Berkeley. With the sun riding toward the West behind us, the air is briny and the sky is the color of tangelos. We are sitting at a table, six of us, drinking beer, eating oysters, French fries and crispy fried sardines. There is a photograph somewhere, a group selfie that captures this occasion,” Patrick Hanlon writes for Forbes. “In the photograph, my friend Jon is leaning over toward Craig Tanimoto. But the photograph does not capture what Jon says to Craig as he leans into him. ‘So,’ Jon asks. ‘How does it feel to be the man who saved Apple Computer?'”
“Craig Tanimoto is the guy who actually wrote the two words ‘Think different’ for Apple. He placed the words above Thomas Edison’s head, Einstein’s head, above Ghandi’s head. And when he did, he put a ding in the universe,” Hanlon writes. “But even after eighteen years since the ‘Think different’ campaign first appeared on walls everywhere, Tanimoto has never fully taken credit for the two words he came up with in 1997, when he was an art director at Apple’s advertising agency Chiat-Day. In fact, even though Tanimoto has been rewarded for the campaign he initiated to help save Apple—and even though several other people have obliquely accepted credit, Craig Tanimoto humbly accepts an authorship that is his, and his alone.”
Hanlon writes, “It always goes something like this: ‘I don’t think anyone knew what the answer was,’ says Tanimoto. And about the Think different campaign specifically: ‘It wasn’t what we were looking for, but it was everything that we needed.'”
Tons more more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs was the man who saved Apple.
Even though he had a lot of help, including Craig Tanimoto’s, without Steve Jobs, there would be no Apple today.
Regardless of the headline’s veracity or lack thereof, the article does make for an interesting read.