Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

Happy New Year - Lucky 13!

Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous 2013!

Happy decorating,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone!
It's officially Autumn and nothing makes it feel like Autumn more than Thanksgiving weekend. The leaves are all changing colours - beautiful reds, oranges and yellows - the days are sunny and crisp - my favourite time of year!

Hope you're all enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend with family and friends!

Happy decorating!
Lenore

Thank You Mr. Jobs ...

On the one year anniversary of Steve Jobs, I thought I'd repost then entry I did on his death. Also, here's the video Apple has shared for the anniversary.

 

Thank you Steve.

Steve Jobs. I’m sure the name is familiar. The world lost a truly genius man - extremely creative and ahead of everyone else. In the last few days a lot has been written about this man. I have taken the opportunity to read many of the articles to get to know the man behind that famous icon - the apple.

As I suspected, the reason I didn’t know much about him was because he was truly a private person - but during his 2005 Stanford commencement address, we were offered a sneak peek into the life of the man that spearheaded everything behind that icon.

Below is his address

"I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College [Portland, Oregon] after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz [Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2bn company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling-out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7.30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die". It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful, but purely intellectual, concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but some day not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and then, when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish". It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Thank you all very much.”

What a beautiful speech ... I think that we can all learn from him and his address ... my favourite part is the following ...

“...Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...”

As someone who runs two businesses, this snapshot from his address is very meaningful and inspiring. 

This man is truly behind a lot of what I have accomplished professionally. Twenty years ago I began using a Macintosh - the LCII. It was so exciting to be doing layout electronically at the time. After that I moved on to the Mac 8500, then the eMac, then the MacBookPro, then the iMac (which is what I still use today). I have always been able to rely on my Macs - unlike PC’s that would come and go in my life, the Mac never let me down. I haven’t touched a PC in over ten years and know that I will always be able to count on my trusty Apple products.

The Mac revolutionized the way that graphic designers could work, making layouts easier to create and type setting a work of art. Today I continue to create all of my corporate and personal graphic work as well as my space planning plans on the mac. I run two business with it - create quotes, samples, invoices ... anything needed to operate a business. It continues to make tasks easier and work a pleasure.

Along with my professional life, my personal life relies heavily on everything Steve Jobs has created. My trusty iPad accompanies me everywhere and keeps track of all of my personal contacts, photos and any other information I want handy. My iPhone never leaves my side - and in my opinion - no other ‘smartphone’ even comes close to what this little machine can do along with how beautifully it can do it.

Thank you Steve Jobs ... you won’t be forgotten.

Interior Design - A Designers Tool Bag

Every interior professional has their own set of trade tools and today I thought I'd do a fun post and show you some of the things I use on a daily basis - hope you enjoy!

Big Work Surface

My desk, while big, never seems large enough. Although I consider myself to be an extremely organized and tidy individual, my desk never seems to convey this. Once I'm into a project - it completely takes over my work surface - it's no wonder I'm always losing my phone beneath the piles of papers, samples and books!

Coffee

To stay and to go! Especially needed when budgeting and trying to stay on top of the daily paperwork that unfortunately goes along with what I do - I much prefer the creative side. 

View

A good view is essential to inspiration - this is mine daily (Toronto looking South/East) from my desk and on the road too!

Computer

My trusty Apple computers have been my business partners since I began designing (a long time ago). Today it's my 27" iMac - great for multitasking on screen. When I'm on the go, my iPad fills in. 

Paper

Notebooks filled with project notes and inspiration are always in my hand, no matter where I am. Projects are kept in files - white of course, and in office on clipboards hanging on the wall for easy access by anyone to quickly jump in and take over. 

Music

I just couldn't possibly work without music in the background - selection changes daily depending on my mood. Lately there's been a mixture of Daughtry, Ricky Martin and Kenny Chesney - I know, eclectic right?

Writing Instruments

Pens, markers and highlighters are constantly strewn across my desk - as most of you know, the G-Tec is my absolute favourite pen - there's nothing like it in my opinion. For quick/rough sketches and drawings I reach for a .3 or .5 black ink marker - highlighters are used in my notes as reminders.

 

CAD Tools

Floor Plans and Elevation Drawings are completed mostly with CAD tools. I love it because its an add on to Adobe Illustrator which I've been using since school (about 20 years). Makes dimensioning and scaling a breeze with the added drawing features of Illustrator.

Number Tools

A measuring tape is always at my side when planning, sourcing and on site. Stanley tends to be my favourite but I have a few 'prettier' ones that I use from time to time. A calculator is always useful for budgeting and converting.

Reference Materials

I'm a major book lover. I have dozens of books - on design mainly - I never tire of looking at them and am always eager to get my hands on the latest one. And I can very often be found at my local library researching and signing out more. (Love that I can manage holds and requests on-line these days.)

Photographic Equipment

My large Canon is great for capturing finished rooms and finished custom furniture. My smaller Canon is handy to have in my purse to snap a photo of something I'm sourcing. And my iPhone is used when I want to send a snap of something that could be perfect for a project to an assistant or client for quick approval. Also always handy to capture inspiration and the canvas being worked on.

Phone

Ahhh ... my iPhone. Don't get me started on this - there is no better phone - I'll stop here. Keeps me connected in every way and backing up to my iMac and iPad is a breeze thanks to iCloud!

Glasses

What can I say, I need them daily.

Markers

They make my CAD drawings come to life and help to pull a colour concept together - I'm a fan of Prismacolor - guess it's due to the fact that it's what I was trained with.

 Templates

I have a template for everything - it's the compulsive organizer in me. My budget template keeps things on budget and ensures nothing gets forgotten when procuring.

  

Swatches

Fabric swatches and  paint chips help to pull a colour scheme together and create the direction and mood for a space. I get lost in paint chips and even more so in fabric samples. Right now I'm loving all the traditional patterns done in modern and contemporary ways. And as for paint colours - any grey with a mauve undertone is working for me.

Bag and File Case

I spend a big part of my week on the road meeting with suppliers, sourcing and seeing clients. And there is a lot I need with me - so, my oversized leather bag is big enough to throw everything into and chic enough to not look like a 'work bag'. My travel file case is always in my truck - it's the template thing again.

Flowers

And last but not least, something pretty. There is nothing better than getting to your desk to start a day with some pretty flowers next to you. Always makes me smile!

So, I hope you enjoyed my post on my daily tools - there are more, but these are the most used ones!

Happy decorating everyone!

Lenore

PS - We're posting daily decorating tips on our facebook page - Like it to receive them daily!

Happy Easter All!

Wishing you a lovely Easter Holiday!
Ldesigns Team.

Eva Zeisel - 105 and going strong!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a fan of pottery - more specifically white pottery. I's timeless, classic and never goes out of style. The works of Eva Zeisel have always appealed to me. So, today I thought I would devote my blog entry to her.

Eva started her studies at the young age of 17 in Budapest, where she studied fine art and soon after entered an apprenticeship as a potter. She moved around Europe to experience new movements all the while designing beautiful pieces of pottery. Her work was displayed in many Museums, including MoMA in New York.

She has had an incredible career that is still going strong. Many of her designs are still being produced today - my favourite is her Classic Century table setting line. In the early 40’s Eva was approached by the Museum of Modern Art to design the first ‘all white china service’ in the States. Working with Castleton China and delayed due to World War II, it wasn't until 1946 that MoMA exhibited the collection and the reaction left no question of Eva Zeisels importance as one of the leaders in modern ceramic design. Many commissions followed for famous department stores and Eva worked with a number of important manufacturers. It was her work at Hall China in the early 50’s which attracted the attention of Royal Stafford and discovering that Eva still retained the original block moulds led them to recreate items from the Classic and Century shapes for a new generation, 5 decades and the next millennium from the original concept. This line is still being produced today - which is a testament to her talent and popularity - I've said it so many times ... classic design never goes out of style ... and here is the proof ...

Why have any old teapot when you can have a one that is functional, beautiful and a work of art!

Gravy boat - probably the most iconic piece.

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Happy decorating!

Lenore

Images: Crate and Barrel, Royal Stafford)

Colour of the Year - Tangerine Tango

Every December Pantone announces the colour of the year ... and every year at this time I wait in anticipation for this announcement ... will it be a blue, a green, a violet ... well, here it is, just announced, this years colour of the year ...

Tangerine Tango!

Tangerine Tango, a spirited reddish orange, provides the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward.

“Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”

Energize interior spaces with Tangerine Tango patterned home accessories. Pillows, bedspreads and tabletop accessories in this high-impact hue add spice to any room. Or incorporate Tangerine Tango appliances and personal electronics for an unexpected pop of color. Looking for an inexpensive way to perk up your home? Paint a wall in Tangerine Tango for a dynamic burst of energy in the kitchen, entryway or hallway.

Are you bold enough to use this colour in your home? I'm not one to go big with trends ... a small accent vase or pillow I can live with ... a room painted in this bold colour, not so much - but hey, it might grow on me!

Happy Decorating!

Lenore

(Images: pantone)

Signs!

Hi everyone!
We just finished another fun project for a wonderful young family! We'll post pics very soon - it turned out so great - everyone is pleased! I think it's my new favourite room - I say that about all of my projects - I can't keep changing my own decor, but at least I get to live them vicariously through my clients.

In the coming weeks we'll post a bunch of before and after photos from a few jobs we've completed throughout the city - by the way, look for our new signs ... it's always so strange to pull up to a clients home and see me there.

Will post snaps soon - promise.

Happy Decorating!

Lenore

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Her's a little background on this special day ...

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day (Canadian French: Jour de l'Action de grâce), occurring on the second Monday in October, is an annual Canadian holiday to give thanks at the close of the harvest season. Although the original act of Parliament references God and the holiday is celebrated in churches, the holiday is mostly celebrated in a secular manner. Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in all provinces in Canada, except for Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. While businesses may remain open in these provinces, the holiday is nonetheless, recognized and celebrated regardless of its status.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada. Because of the longstanding traditions of the holiday, the celebration often extends to the weekend that falls closest to the day it is celebrated

The reason for the earlier Thanksgiving celebrations in Canada has often been attributed to the earlier onset of winter in the north, thus ending the harvest season earlier.[17] Thanksgiving in Canada did not have a fixed date until the late 19th century. Prior to Canadian confederation, many of the individual colonial governors of the Canadian provinces had declared their own days of Thanksgiving. The first official Canadian Thanksgiving occurred on April 15, 1872 when the nation was celebrating the Prince of Wales' recovery from a serious illness.[17] By the end of the 19th Century, Thanksgiving Day was normally celebrated on November 6. However, when World War I ended, the Armistice Day holiday were usually held during the same week. To prevent the two holidays from clashing with one another, in 1957 the Canadian Parliament proclaimed Thanksgiving to be observed on its present date on the second Monday of October.[5] Since 1971, when the American Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, the American observance of Columbus Day has coincided with the Canadian observance of Thanksgiving.

Hope you're all enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Lenore

(Image: table)

Thank you Mr. Jobs.

Thank you Steve.

Steve Jobs. I’m sure the name is familiar. The world lost a truly genius man - extremely creative and ahead of everyone else. In the last few days a lot has been written about this man. I have taken the opportunity to read many of the articles to get to know the man behind that famous icon - the apple.

As I suspected, the reason I didn’t know much about him was because he was truly a private person - but during his 2005 Stanford commencement address, we were offered a sneak peek into the life of the man that spearheaded everything behind that icon.

Below is his address

"I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College [Portland, Oregon] after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz [Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2bn company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling-out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7.30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die". It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful, but purely intellectual, concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but some day not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and then, when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words "Stay hungry. Stay foolish". It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Thank you all very much.”

What a beautiful speech ... I think that we can all learn from him and his address ... my favourite part is the following ...

“...Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...”

As someone who runs two businesses, this snapshot from his address is very meaningful and inspiring.

This man is truly behind a lot of what I have accomplished professionally. Twenty years ago I began using a Macintosh - the LCII. It was so exciting to be doing layout electronically at the time. After that I moved on to the Mac 8500, then the eMac, then the MacBookPro, then the iMac (which is what I still use today). I have always been able to rely on my Macs - unlike PC’s that would come and go in my life, the Mac never let me down. I haven’t touched a PC in over ten years and know that I will always be able to count on my trusty Apple products.

The Mac revolutionized the way that graphic designers could work, making layouts easier to create and type setting a work of art. Today I continue to create all of my corporate and personal graphic work as well as my space planning plans on the mac. I run two business with it - create quotes, samples, invoices ... anything needed to operate a business. It continues to make tasks easier and work a pleasure.

Along with my professional life, my personal life relies heavily on everything Steve Jobs has created. My trusty iPad accompanies me everywhere and keeps track of all of my personal contacts, photos and any other information I want handy. My iPhone never leaves my side - and in my opinion - no other ‘smartphone’ even comes close to what this little machine can do along with how beautifully it can do it.

Thank you Steve Jobs ... you won’t be forgotten.