MacOS Product Manager
Senior Art Director and Copywriter
I was incredibly lucky to began my career in tech at Apple. The nine years I worked there gave me experiences and taught me skills I rely on to this day.
I began as an entry-level graphic designer in Creative Services—one of the most talented and influential marketing communication groups of all time. I participated in and led several print and interactive media firsts, such as the first direct-to-film (i.e. no intermediate paste up required) print project and the first interactive annual report.
I became a copywriter when creative directors noticed I could explain key Apple product features simply and clearly because of my technical and science background.
I was the liaison with Apple software and hardware teams, which led to me become a MacOS product manager for printing, graphics, and type.
Product Manager, Mac OS
QuickDraw GX had been announced six years before I became product manager. My job was to ship it. GX was an incredible printing, graphics, and typography API but only one GX feature was available to users absent developer adoption—a new printing interface that included a PDF-like universal doc format. I got GX included with System 7, Apple’s first commercial Mac OS release, as the foundation of an improved printing UX.
First interactive annual report
I was a member of the Creative Services team that created the first broadly-distributed interactive document, Apple’s 1987 annual report. Creative Services was fascinated by HyperCard. A few creative directors realized they could use HyperCard to showcase the content of the upcoming 1987 annual report in an entirely new way.
It was an amazing experience. We had to decide, from scratch, on interactions and navigation paradigms users take for granted now. For example, how do you identify click-able items to someone who’s never clicked through interactive content before? What animations are needed to convey how the user is navigating content?
The Apple annual report HyperCard supplement was sent to a limited number of shareholders and analysts. The idea was to encourage people who didn’t have a Mac to find one in order to view the content.
First direct-to-film print job
For the Seybold printing conference, I wrote and designed a brochure about Macintosh media that in and of itself became a great example of Mac printing capabilities. I worked with Lightspeed, a maker of high-end scanners, to output the brochure directly to the 4-color film which was then used to make printing plates. This is common practice now, but had never been done before. The 4-color film film was output at Lightspeed’s offices in England and was hand-carried to Los Angeles on the Concorde.
TrueType introduction
I was the “technical” art director in Creative Services, assigned to use the newest hardware and software to showcase Macintosh DTP capabilities. I wrote, designed, and produced a series of brochures on then-cutting edge printing and typographic products.
