In 2005, I was writing an article about how calligraphy awakens a beginner's mind, and I was looking for a quote from someone who was not a professional calligrapher.

It was like a heaven-sent message when I heard Steve championed calligraphy and what it feels to be a beginner in his keynote speech for Stanford's 2005 commencement. Wow: an unexpected quote from the insanely great Steve Jobs.

While many think of Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur, a billionaire Apple leader, the innovator of iPads, iPods and iPhones, I think of Steve as an artist.

What set his products apart from the rest was his creative way of merging art and science together to create a cutting edge products like the iPod and iPad; not only were they technically functional, but they were beautiful to behold. He knew that beautiful design plus technology equals customer satisfaction. What makes a company valuable is when it has customers who love its inventions. 

At Steve's 2005 commencement address at Stanford, he spoke of his love for the lettering arts, and how calligraphy had been an influence on him. He began to practice it even he didn't know how it could be useful for the future: 

"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 san 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." 

Calligraphy at Reed College was the brainchild of English Professor Lloyd Reynolds. At the time Steve was at Reed, Robert Palladino was the calligraphy instructor. 

Steve continued, "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. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later." 

Steve Jobs was an eternal beginner, always tinkering with new ideas, never satisfied even when a product that was successful. Like a true artist, he was always at the drawing board. While other like to label themselves as experts, he enjoyed being a beginner. 

When Apple fired him, he said, "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."

He taught us it's okay to fail and start all over again. I remembered one time his demo failed because the network connections didn't work. It didn't affect his confidence. Steve just shrugged and said, "Sometimes things don't work."

When he got married, the wedding invitation was designed in calligraphy by one of my calligraphy teachers, Georgia Deaver. Even though he had an arsenal of computers, his personal party invitations were hand calligraphed, not computerized.

The insanely great Steve Jobs is gone, but his legacy remains.

Thanks Steve for being an inspiration. God bless you and I hope you enjoy working in Heaven where there are more Supercomputers than you can ever imagine.

Thanks, Steve, for mentioning calligraphy; the lost art has been revived by your speech. People are curious what calligraphy is all about, and some think it might help them design better products or how to be aware of minute details.

Elizabeth Nisperos is currently one of the resident artists of the Judicial Council (CA Supreme Court, Superior Court, Court of Appeals). Her piece, Sarimanok, Bird of Enchantment (Symbol of  Wealth, Prosperity and Abundance) is on exhibition at Milton Marks Gallery in San Francisco from August 1, 2011 to January 31, 2012. She volunteers as a coordinator for Fort Mason Calligraphy Classes (where classes are usually full with a waiting list) and works as a techie and computer programmer.