Dear Steve:

I never got the honor or pleasure of meeting you in person, but I feel compelled to write this to share with you and others in the community about how much you meant (and continue to mean) to me.

Hearing the News

I was at Uptown Espresso near downtown Seattle, where I was working on some User Interface designs on my 15″ MacBook Pro. It was a normal day of sitting with my computer, thinking, creating and designing. My friend Melissa IMs me and asks if I was okay. I said “Yeah, why?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Mel asked me if I heard about you, and I said no. She told me that King 5 News and Komo were reporting that you died. I responded to her “Steve Jobs has died about five times on Twitter.” I didn’t want to believe her, but was very afraid that what she was telling me was true. I was praying and hoping that she was pulling my leg.

She wasn’t.

Reaction

I couldn’t help myself but started crying at the coffee shop. People were wondering what was wrong with me. I was not heartbroken by the loss of the man who is CEO of Apple, or the guy who unveils products, but a teacher and mentor I never met.

There were two instances where I remember feeling this type of sadness for the passing of two people I have never met, when Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson passed. This one was the worst.

For me, Apple is about the community before it is the product. Your ability to capture and recognize beauty and innovation in the simplest things were inspiring to me. The emphases you had on typography for computers, inspired by a calligraphy class you took at Reed College—that was (and is) the type of inspiration I wanted to have.

You were (and are) one of the reasons I became passionate about design—ever since I was a kid, but especially in the most recent years. I began to discover design as functionality, which grew my passion for User Experience Design and User Interface Design. I didn’t want to make things just pretty, but simple, functional and practical. Besides Marie, you are one of my greatest mentors. It was not necessarily his products that inspire me, but how you innovated and the process of creating those products…what considerations were made to create it.

My Promise to You

I thought about how I could honor you; if I should make a design tribute, a video, or something like that. It became clear to me that there is only one way to honor you.

To keep living.

My promise to you is that I continue to live my life how I have been—full of inspiration, wonder and most importantly, curiosity.  It is my obligation as a designer and creator to do this. I need to remember how much hard work it takes to be innovative, imaginative and creative.

For me, I still need to mourn. After that, it’s back to the wireframes, drawings and designs.

Thank you for everything you have taught me, Steve. I will honor your legacy the only way I know how…to live my life as inspiring as possible.

Oh. One more thing…

After I heard about your passing, I saw someone trip over a power adapter of a PC and almost knocked the entire computer down. I can’t help but think you might have chuckled.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]