Morisawa fonts
My first meeting with Steve Jobs was not even supposed to be with Steve. I was to meet with the product manager for an impromptu negotiation over the license fees NeXT paid quarterly to Adobe Systems on every copy of NeXTSTEP shipped to Japan.
Each workstation shipping into Japan had to have two Morisawa fonts bundled with Adobe Postscript as part of the Postscript agreement. The perceived quality of the fonts was key to the quality hyper Japanese market.
Morisawa was at the time, and remains, a purveyor of fonts for all types of applications. The complexity of the font and of the Japanese language commanded a high price. At the time, you could not compete in the Japanese publishing market without incorporating the Morisawa fonts in your production toolchain. Steve had no choice but to pay.
The Redwood City NeXT campus was small and beautiful in its architectural precision. The buildings, exceedingly well appointed, sat planted in an exquisite Japanese garden allegedly influenced by Larry Ellison Himself, who at the time had an affinity for all things Japanese.
Mr. Ellison’s house in the hills was of Japanese design and rumored to be the model for NeXT headquarters. At the time, the study and emulation of all things Japanese was all the rage. Tracts like The Japan That Can Say No, written in 1989, were read, digested, and debated all along Central Expressway.
The NeXT campus sat in the Port of Redwood City, a small smudge of land sitting in South San Francisco Bay and still a working, deep-water port. When settlers first came to the area, they discovered a natural deep water channel at the base of Redwood Creek. It made the 19th century redwood genocide even easier. Located south of the San Mateo Bridge and north of the Dumbarton Bridge, large bulk freighters still call to load and unload, though the redwood trade and logging in the Santa Cruz Mountains is long dead.
The NeXT campus, nestled between the Port and a county dump, was oddly quaint, sheltered, and out-of-the-way. The main building felt and smelt like a Bentley, a haven in what could be a wet, humid, and dusty peninsula into the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Its simplicity welcomed supplicants who came to pay homage to Steve.
A giant NeXT logo etched in glass greeted you at the door and a suspended IM Pei staircase led to the executive offices on the second floor. The bathrooms were prototypical, with only the best fixtures and etched glass logos. The paper towels were thick enough to serve as washcloths, in fact, I was unsure what to do with it after I dried my hands.
But the main building was for another day, another meeting. I didn’t make it there on that day.
Julie
My meeting was with Julie, an old friend who was very much into fonts (note the recurring trend) and had worked at Sun Microsystems before joining NeXT. Later, Julie went to Santa Clara University, got her JD, passed the California Bar, and became a successful Silicon Valley attorney. I ended up going to law school because Julie blazed the trail and showed it was possible to do, but that’s for another story.
Julie ran out to greet me before I got to the main lobby.
“Steve is coming.”
“OK.”
We were going to talk fonts. Talking Japanese fonts with Julie. Me and Julie. Julie and I. Alone. No one else. No cohort. No Steve. Just Julie.
“Steve will be there.”
“OK.”
OK. Steve will be there. Steve? Did someone else at NeXT dare call themselves Steve?
“He wants to negotiate the Japanese fonts.”
“OK.”
“Today.”
OK. OK. Yeah. Steve wants to negotiate. Japanese fonts. Today.
So, it was going to be my first meeting with Steve, and not by choice.
When he felt it was needed, Steve often bypassed his people and did things himself — no one in the middle to garble things up. The Japanese fonts were expensive and viewed almost as a tax placed on every NeXT box slated to ship to Japan.
I signed in at the main building, got badged, and walked with Julie to the outbuilding which I believe was fifty yards or so away from the main lobby. It was a small auditorium that also served as a classroom or a lecture hall, with the chairs arrayed appropriately.
I slowly became aware that a bunch of people joining us for the meeting. I felt blindsided. The odor of popcorn wafted from the carpeting.
I had never met Steve. This was it. I felt alone. He came up to me. We shook hands.
It was at least ten to one, I wasn’t about to talk to Steve, I was about to talk to Steve in front of his extremely supportive cohort.
Was I ready for an hour with Steve? It became a rhetorical question.
