Letters to a Young Creator
What it takes to make something great, from people who have done it before
-
-
4.4 • 126 Ratings
-
Publisher Description
Letters to a Young Creator is a collection of honest perspectives on what it takes to make something great, written by people who have done it before.
The series features contributions from notable figures across business, design, technology, and the arts, written in response to questions posed by past and present SJA Fellows. The title is a nod to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet—one of Steve’s favorites—and to Steve’s own practice of exchanging ideas as a path toward clarity.
Our full contributor list features Tadao Ando, Paola Antonelli, Mario Bellini, Larry Brilliant, Anders Byriel, Ed Catmull, Jon M. Chu, Lee Clow, Tim Cook, Brunello Cucinelli, Es Devlin, Pete Docter, Mickey Drexler, Lord Norman Foster, Davis Guggenheim, Jenny Holzer, Bob Iger, Jimmy Iovine, Jony Ive, Rashid Johnson, Alan Kay, David Kelley, Marc Newson, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ben Okri, Dieter Rams, Alice Rawsthorn, Arthur Rock, Ruth Rogers, Samuel Ross, Cindy Sherman, Mona Simpson, and Anna Deavere Smith, as well as an introduction from Laurene Powell Jobs.
Customer Reviews
Inspirational
Human creators have created different forms of art, technology, culture, and society. The immediate “creators” of young creators are our parents. However, if we trace back, who is the creator of the origin of human, or earth, or the entire universe? Church, scientists, and historians all worked hard to try to come up with an answer.
The specie of human being, as a whole, had made tremendous progress into today, to name ourselves creators made us resemble the religious image of the creator. Letters from various creators who have succeeded in their field of work is both inspirational and educational.
I love the letter of the epilogue, which is a letter from Steve to Steve, the most. I felt the sense of humility and the appreciation to the entire human species. We can only do so much, but combined with the work of others, we can create a community of love, integrity, prosperity.
Vocation as a creation not a pastime
A work such as Letters to a Young Creator is a lantern in an age of shadows. I approached it with the cautious reverence of one who listens for echoes of eternity in the whispers of men, and I left with the unmistakable imprint of the divine spark upon my mind. Each page speaks as if from the inner sanctum of human dignity, addressing the youth not as mere inheritors of the world’s noise, but as potential architects of meaning itself.
The author’s words do not flatter—they elevate. There is an austere tenderness in these letters, a Socratic patience that coaxes the soul upward, toward its own summit. In the meditations on creation, I hear the music of freedom, not the frivolous freedom of impulse, but the solemn freedom of one who must answer to the eternity within.
To read this book is to be reminded that the vocation of a creator is not a pastime, but a calling that sanctifies time. Five stars are insufficient for a work that leaves the reader both humbled and emboldened, a rare companion in a world that has forgotten the weight of its own spirit.
Me volvió loco.
Es una historia que se queda contigo para siempre. Must read.