It's no news that Steve Jobs was a big fan of Picasso's work, even including him in one of the 'Think Different' commercials from back in the day. But did you know that Picasso might have had a bigger influence on the Apple products than we would think? Jobs even quoted Picasso on his memorable statement that reads: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal" so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the artist's work has a space within the Apple visual language.
The first blatant example is the famous Finder logo with the split blue faces that was originally designed in 1997. The icon has an uncanny resemblance to Picasso's painting Two Characters (1934), a blatant homage to the artist perhaps? There's another theory that states that the Finder icon might be influenced by the Bauhaus' Weimar exposition, you can check it out here.
This is the original Mac icon called the 'Picasso Mac' because of its clear inspiration in the artist's style of drawing. It was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, the art directors behind the original development team. Although Jobs wasn't completely into this logo, it became the symbol of Mac until it was later replaced by the Happy Mac blue icon. So from the early starts of the huge company that is Apple today, Picasso's influence can be seen both in the graphic language of the brand and as part of its core philosophy.
