In 1981, while Steve Jobs was promoting personal computers on CBS, Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication was already using them.
The Apple IIe was in classrooms. Then, the technology allowed the college an advance look at how the platform was changing the field.
“We believed you could digitize images before anybody else could,” said Terry Eiler, director of VisCom.
The college began to pull ahead competitively in the VisCom field.
“It put VisCom in the role of leadership,” Eiler said. “Not everything we did was correct; we tried some things that did not work. But that meant we were a school with a faculty that had to stay pretty nimble.”
OU was working with Apple products before the company had fully developed its system. Users could write normal type on the platform but could not incorporate “traditional halftone” pictures, Eiler said.
“It wasn’t until it became possible to do it all that the publishing industry went very crazy on Apple products,” he said. “I can’t help but wonder how much that company was made by that exceptional talent we just lost. What a brilliant idea factor he was.”
Now, Apple products are the platform of choice for most OU students studying design or photography who are seeking tools for their trade.
Jobs will no longer offer ideas to the Apple brand, but Eiler said his products have forever affected consumers.
“On the one side, we have older faculty members, and on the other, eager, young professional students,” he said. “And we’re still having fun. I would blame that on our university and Apple.”
sj950610@ohiou.edu
