Reed calligraphy may have been an early influence, but it was Steve's relationship with John Warnock and Chuck Geschke at Adobe Systems that spawned the wealth of fonts we have on our computers today. John and Chuck were out of Xerox PARC, where they had witnessed personal computer development, including the mouse, as had Steve.

It was their experimentation and development of outline type and Postscript technology, collaborating with Jobs and Apple, that brought an endless variety of clean, elegant type to the computer....eliminating the infamous "jaggies" that plagued early computer fonts.

Adobe and Apple in concert, along with HP laser printers, were the primary parents of desktop publishing, which to this day, is the basis and foundation for how we print and publish.

Of course, without it we'd likely have a lot of fonts on our computers, they'd just be rather terrible fixed-width bitmap fonts used in most of our apps/UIs. Easy to imagine the real stuff being only implemented in high-end design software.

Reading that, I think a few people here might not have liked 1970s Steve one little bit!

He had Lloyd Reynolds for Art History. Lloyd was the guru of calligraphy in Oregon.

I have a colleague who had a friend working under Jobs' direction, and he claims vehemently Jobs' was a tyrant and not a big reason for Apple's success. I just can't believe the latter about Jobs as his return to Apple coincides with its meteoritic rise in product quality success. Others who knew Jobs personally say he did have a temper. But even still, we're going to miss him. Jobs and Apple are helping, for instance, the environment much more than the U.S government ever will. The communication devices allow us to conserve on needless car trips and allow great time savings.

Dubbit, I know better than to comment before I read the article. duh....

NPR's Talk of the Nation today broadcast Jobs' commencement speech to the 2005 Stanford graduating class where he discusses this as one of three big life lessons. A link to the transcript and the speech:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1006/Steve-Jobs-s-2005-Stanford-commencement-address

Funny...I knew the original apple graphics (and font) designer when she was in college.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Kare

Jobs had the good sense to find someone who actually had a passion for that kind of thing.

Last American Who Knew What The F*** He Was Doing Dies

Apple helps the environment? Or was that a joke? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/21/apple-least-green-tech-company

Jobs was arguably a genius with a temperament to match. I find it difficult to idolize a person who denies fathering and then refuses to support his child, as Jobs did with his eldest daughter.

Re: "...a person who denies fathering and then refuses to support his child, as Jobs did with his eldest daughter"

Portland Native,

Regarding Mr Jobs's first-born, Lisa Brennan-Jobs:

"When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/8-things-didn-t-know-life-steve-jobs-172130955.html

But his own begetting was hardly white-bread suburban:

"Jobs had been born to Jandali and Simpson, a pair of 23-year-old unwed University of Wisconsin graduate students, in 1955. Just months after giving their baby up for adoption, the two married, then had another child, whom they kept: Mona Simpson, who grew up to become a critically acclaimed novelist and never knew her famous brother existed until she was an adult.

A charming, promising academic, Jandali later abandoned his wife and 4-year-old daughter, moving from job to job as a political science professor before leaving academe. Now 76, he works as food and beverage director at the Boomtown Hotel & Casino near Reno. Mona Simpson's novel, 'The Lost Father,' is based on her quest to find him.

When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa's mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn't be Lisa's father because he was 'sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child.' He later acknowledged paternity of Lisa, married Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA, and fathered three more children. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 29, graduated from Harvard and is a writer."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index2.htm

While Mr Jobs might have welcomed admiration -- something his own missing biological father never provided, idolization does not appear to have been a relationship he encouraged.

Forced into paying for his eldest daughter's college education is not what I call parenting.
Seve Jobs created a lot of good items, some of which I use. He was a lousy parent to his first child, but maybe his daughter was better off without having to deal with such a singularly selfish and self-centered parent.