Steve Jobs: the human logo

Abstract

This paper will focus on the idea of the ‘human logo’ by exploring the example of Steve Jobs (the CEO of Apple Computers Inc.). Specifically this paper will investigate the notion that in the period of late-modernity ‘people’ increasingly have been able to brand themselves. This involves a type of commodification of the self for public consumption. Equally people have come to represent branded forms of knowledge, in the same way that a more traditional logo works as a sign to represent a wider system of beliefs. Findings from a discourse analysis of Jobs’ 2005 commencement address to a group of Stanford University graduates were compared with secondary sources about Jobs, and reoccurring discourses produced by consumer interviews. Conclusions look at how Jobs, through reflexively constructing for public consumption a ‘lifestyle project’ (Giddens, 1991), mediates between producer and consumer.