In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most
memorable print campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white
portrait of an iconic historical figure with just the Apple logo and the words
“Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly engaging was that
the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon,
Dylan, Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others
caused people to pause, puzzle, and maybe ask a friend to put a name to
the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard Feynman,
Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart.
Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who
had taken risks, defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a
different way. A photography buff, he became involved in making sure they
had the perfect iconic portraits. “This is not the right picture of Gandhi,” he
erupted to Clow at one point. Clow explained that the famous Margaret
Bourke-White photograph of Gandhi at the spinning wheel was owned by
Time-Life Pictures and was not available for commercial use. So Jobs called
Norman Pearlstine, the editor in chief of Time Inc., and badgered him into
making an exception. He called Eunice Shriver to convince her family to
release a picture that he loved, of her brother Bobby Kennedy touring
Appalachia, and he talked to Jim Henson’s children personally
to get the right shot of the late Muppeteer.
He likewise called Yoko Ono for a picture of her late husband, John Lennon.
She sent him one, but it was not Jobs’s favorite. “Before it ran, I was in New
York, and I went to this small Japanese restaurant that I love, and let her
know I would be there,” he recalled. When he arrived, she came over to his
table. “This is a better one,” she said, handing him an envelope. “I thought
I would see you, so I had this with me.” It was the classic photo of her and
John in bed together, holding flowers, and it was the one that