Susan Kare
The Icons You Grew Up With
The Macintosh interface, one pixel at a time
Rating
90Impact score
Domains
Interface designIconographyTypography
Scouting report
Designed the original Macintosh icons, fonts and cursors on graph paper, inventing a visual grammar for direct manipulation that nobody had needed before. The Command key symbol, the trash can, the watch cursor and the Happy Mac are hers. Later did the same work for NeXT, Microsoft and IBM. Her bitmaps are in MoMA.
Curator’s note
Made the computer look friendly, in a 32 by 32 grid.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Susan Kare by Cooper Hewitt, licensed CC BY 3.0.
Sources
- 01Susan Kare en.wikipedia.org
- 02Her portfolio kare.com