about the book
Follow the life of Steve Jobs and explore his techno-centric world. Passionate about making computers better, faster, and easier to use, Jobs turned them from huge mega machines into small, portable personal items found in most homes. He basically changed how people communicated and created things that we can’t live without.
Steve started Apple Computer in his parent’s garage and from there, he went on to create such innovative products as the Macintosh, Macs, iPods, iPad, iPhones, NeXT, and much more. He even changed how cartoons were produced with his Pixar movies.
Using black and white illustrations and hand lettered text, each chapter deals with a different period of Steve’s life, including his adoption as a baby, his precocious childhood, and his constant tinkering. It explores Steve’s young years in Silicon Valley as he dropped out of college and founded Apple. It discusses his relationship and work with Stephen Wozniak, his disagreement with Bill Gates, and his being forced out of Apple by the new CEO only to reenergize the company years later.
The book doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff—his geekiness, willfulness, and quirky personality, his demanding drive, his overbearing perfectionism, his “reality distortion field,” his personal demons, his devastating setbacks and myriad contradictions. It also explains his need for simplicity, his lifelong Zen obsession, his unparalleled brilliance, his meteoric successes, and his passion for the perfect product.
Innovator. Inventor. Entrepreneur. Steve Jobs is considered by many to be the late 20th century’s greatest technology contributor, the man who revolutionized the computer industry.
about the author/illustrator
The moment you spot Jessie Hartland’s unique art you know exactly who created it. It is sketchy, colorful and complex, stuffed full of collaged details. The wacky figures are childlike and lots of hand lettered text swirls in and around all the images. Every millimeter of space on every page is filled. She works in gouache, a difficult medium—think opaque watercolors with the consistency of mayonnaise!
Jessie doesn’t have a background in writing, but she is a big reader of nonfiction and a lover of science. She is especially challenged by complicated material and enjoys simplifying it with pictures and few words. She is exceptionally good story teller.
As a kid, Jessie was a terrible student. Her head was always in the clouds and she doodled on everything. Today, this fine artist, mural painter, mobile maker, store display designer, commercial product artist, author and illustrator also works on ceramics and fabrics. Besides graphic novels for older readers, she also creates children’s picture books. Her loft studio in her Manhattan home is just as crowded as her artful pages, filled with all sorts of inspirational objects and, of course, tons and tons of books. She lives there with her physicist husband and a big black poodle named Django.
Before she wrote Steve Jobs: Insanely Great, Jessie had a general knowledge of Steve’s story. She is a life-time Mac user. But she just had to know how this willful rebellious genius drop-out nerd started a company in a garage that grew into the world’s most valuable corporation.
Shortly after Steve’s death in 2012, Jessie did two and a half years of research, venturing to California to check out Silicon Valley, tour Pixar studios, visit Steve’s childhood home, and other locations where his story unfolded. Six bottles of India ink, 24 pencils, and reams of paper later, she had a graphic novel that is now being published in English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Catalan, Estonian, and Portuguese! It was a daunting project. Jessie says “Steve Jobs died relatively young, yet he did 10 times more than most people do in a long lifetime.” How do you condense such a life into 220 pages?
Sources:
Author/illustrator website
Book details: Author’s official website
Article on author: Macworld
Studio visit and author/illustrator interview: Pen and Oink
Meet the artist & interview: Moomah the Magazine
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