miles davis | Movie Poster Museum

Visionary. Genius. Icon. It’s not often that these kind of lofty terms seem too insufficient to describe a person — but that just might be the case in regards to tech giant, Steve Jobs, the founding father of Apple Computer, who passed away this week at the age of 56. Even if you don’t own a Mac computer or iPhone or iPod, it’s hard to imagine modern life without his contributions.

ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 2010: These posters are from Apple’s Think Different ad campaign back in the early 90’s.

Although this post doesn’t feature movie posters, one could argue that Steve Jobs and his Mac have done more for visual artists than any invention of mankind — except for maybe whoever came up with the paintbrush. But since we don’t know who that is, I’m going with Jobs!

Wilson McLean is a Scottish-born illustrator who started his illustrious career in England before moving onto the United States where his rich, jazzy portraits were freely adopted by the New York City advertising world.

In 2010, he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame — and though his design work was most frequently used on album and magazine covers — he did have a one-hit wonder in the movie poster biz with this dreamy, melodic one-sheet for the 1978 James Toback film, Fingers.