Steve Jobs: Genius by Design: Campfire Biography-Heroes Line (Campfire Graphic Novels)
This cleverly designed volume provides a concise but well-balanced view of Steve Jobs the wunderkind, including his difficult personality and complex genius. Full-color panels provide flat but engaging images of Jobs from infancy to his introduction of the iPad, along with how his adoptive parents, birth parents, spouses and children, boyhood friends, coworkers, and business associates appear in essential physical detail, including postures, but without much facial expression. This design method seems effective here as it emphasizes Jobs’ energetic but often misfired enthusiasms, bullying, and self-promotion, as well as his quieter moments of reflection and the effects his ideas had on industry developments. Tayal allows his own cultural perceptions of ethnicities to underscore Jobs’ genetic makeup as the happily raised genius looks for his birth parents and learns how to be a better parent and partner himself. With its attention to both the personal and the public, this is an excellent starting place to find a concise overview of a complex man’s influences and influence. --Francisca Goldsmith