HOW TO Learning from Susan Kare - Konzeption und Entwurf
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HOW TO
B E C O M E
SUCCESSFUL .
Learning from Susan Kare
1
HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 2
Becoming a world famous graphic designer in the male-dominated tech world
3
HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 4
CONVINCING
W I T H
A PINK MARKER
Sometimes, all you need is the right different icons on a checkered note-
opportunity. For Susan Kare, it was an book with a pink highlighter, imitating
old high school friend who worked at the pixels of the computer screen. At
Apple in the eighties. They were loo- the day of the interview, she arrived
king for someone to design icons for with a lot of books and her sketches
their newest Macintosh model, wich to give the impression that she knew
was supposed to be much more user- what she was talking about when she
friendly by eliminating the until-then really had no actual experience wor-
standard of using code to navigate king as a graphic designer. The pink
and control tasks. Having worked as sketches payed out: just five minutes
a curator after finishing her art degree, into the interview, she was hired. She
she gladly took the opportunity to be- went on to design some of the most
come an artistic creator herself. One iconic digital icons, some of which are
of the requirements of her new job still commonly used today. Her pink
meant creating a new font, and alt- sketches were later bought by the Mu-
hough she had never designed a font seum of Modern Art in New York as a
herself, she was ready to take on the part of the beginnings of pixel art.
challenge. Before the job interview,
she went to the library and got hold
of every book about graphic design
they had. She also did sketches of
CONVINCING WITH A PINK MARKER
5
HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 6
CONVINCING
W I T H
CREATIVITY
„We always Susan Kare designed the suite of
icons that made the Macintosh revo-
try to have a lutionarya computer that you could
communicate with.
range of
Every fifteen minutes or so, as I wro-
te this story, I moved my cursor nor-
thward to click on the disk in the Mi-
solutions and crosoft Word toolbar that indicates
“Save.” This is a superstitious move,
see what as my computer automatically saves
my work every ten minutes. But I lear-
looks right.“ ned to use a computer in the era be-
fore AutoSave, in the dark ages when
remembering to save to a disk often
stood between you and term-paper
disaster. The persistence of that disk
icon into the age of flash drives and
cloud storage is a sign of its power. A
disk means “Save.” Susan Kare de-
signed a version of that disk, as part
of the suite of icons that made the
Macintosh revolutionary—a computer
that you could communicate with in her high-school friend Andy Hertz- meaning “interesting feature,” pulled
pictures. feld asked her to create graphics for from a book of historical symbols.
Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of a new computer that he was working Kare looked to cross-stitch, to mosa-
architecture and design at the Mu- on in California. Kare brought a Grid ics, to hobo signs for inspiration when
seum of Modern Art, was the first to notebook to her job interview at Apple she got stuck. “Some icons, like the
physically show Kare’s original icon Computer. piece of paper, are no problem; but ot-
sketches, in the 2015 exhibit “This is On its pages, she had sketched, in hers defy the visual, like ‘Undo.’ ”
for Everyone.” “If the Mac turned out pink marker, a series of icons to repre- At one point, there was to be an icon
to be such a revolutionary object–– sent the commands that Hertzfeld’s of a copy machine for making a copy
a pet instead of a home appliance, a software would execute. Each square of a file, and users would drag and
spark for the imagination instead of represented a pixel. A pointing finger drop a file onto it to copy it, but it was
a mere work tool––it is thanks to Su- meant “Paste.” A paintbrush symbo- difficult to render a copier at that sca-
san’s fonts and icons, which gave it lized “MacPaint.” Scissors said “Cut.” le. Kare also tried a cat in a mirror, for
voice, personality, style, and even a Kare told me about this origin mo- copycat. Neither made the cut. She
sense of humor. Cherry bomb, anyo- ment: “As soon as I started work, Andy also designed a number of the original
ne?” she joked, referring to the icon Hertzfeld wrote an icon editor and font Mac fonts, including Geneva, Chica-
which greeted crashes in the original editor so I could design images and go, and the picture-heavy Cairo, using
operating system. letterforms using the Mac, not paper,” only a nine-by-seven grid.
After working for Apple, Kare designed she said. “But I loved the puzzle-like Her notebooks are part of the perma-
icons for Microsoft, Facebook, and, nature of working in sixteen-by-six- nent collections of the New York and
now, Pinterest, where she is a creative teen and thirty-two-by-thirty-twopixel San Francisco modern-art museums,
director. The mainstream presence of icon grids, and the marriage of craft and one was included in the recent
Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, emoji, and metaphor.”What Kare lacked in London Design Museum exhibit “Ca-
and gifs is a sign that the visual revolu- computer experience she made up for lifornia: Designing Freedom.” Justin
tionaries have won: online, we all com- in visual knowledge. “Bitmap graphics McGuirk, the co-curator of that exhi-
municate visually, piecing together are like mosaics and needlepoint and bition, said, “The Xerox Star initiated
sentences from tiny-icon languages. other pseudo-digital art forms, all of the metaphor of the ‘desktop’ as an
Kare, who is sixty-four, will be hono- which I had practiced before going icon-based method of interacting with
red for her work on April 20th, by her to Apple,” she told an interviewer, in computers, but it was the Apple Mac
fellow designers, with the prestigi- 2000. The command icon, still right that popularized it.”
ous AIGA medal. In 1982, she was a there to the left of your space bar, was
sculptor and sometime curator when based on a Swedish campground sign
CONVINCING WITH CREATIVITY
7
HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 8
CONVINCING
W I T H
BOLDNESS
„A lot of While the Macintosh once made you
wait with a tiny watch designed by
She was bemused last year when her
son and colleagues at Pinterest aler-
the Future, Kare brings the history of
American graphic design full circle. It
women are Kare, Pinterest offers you a spinning
button when you refresh, also desig-
ted her that a 1984 portrait of her by
Norman Seeff, taken for Rolling Sto-
was she who brought the legendary
Paul Rand (the AIGA Medal winner in
very good
ned by Kare. Last fall, the small home- ne, had turned up on Reddit in the 1966 and a designer of I.B.M.) to the
design brand Areaware débuted Ka- subreddit of “old school cool.” In the attention of Steve Jobs when the latter
re-designed placemats, coasters, and photo, Kare lounges horizontally in her founded NeXT, in 1985, and needed a
digital de- napkins with bitmap raindrops, waves,
and diagonals; I bought them for the
ergonomic chair, wearing jeans and a
gray sweatshirt, with one gray-and-
logo as iconic as the Apple.
I asked Kare if there were other AIGA
signers. And whole family for Christmas.“It’s fun to
read that, before there was social me-
burgundy New Balance shoe propped
on her desk. “Just a regular 1984 work
medalists, besides Rand, whom she
saw as influences, and she lists a se-
have been dia, countless people spent hours with
Microsoft Windows Solitaire using the
outfit—nothing special—but seems
‘pre-normcore’ in retrospect,” she
ries of pre-digital greats whose work
is known for broad appeal, infectious
for a very
cards I designed,” she said. said. “I lived in New Balance and Ree- warmth, and a sometimes cartoony
In 2008, Kare created virtual “gifts” bok ankle-high workout shoes. Col- hand: Charles and Ray Eames (1977),
for Facebook that you could buy and leagues brought me toy robot souve- Milton Glaser (1972), and the New
long time.“ send to a friend, with new offerings
daily, based on a sixty-four-by-sixty-
nirs from work trips to Japan, and I see
postcards of favorite images from the
Yorker contributor and cartoonist Saul
Steinberg (1963). Through their work,
four-pixel grid.The best-sellers played Metropolitan Museum.” The toys, the and now hers, one can see a legacy
to the crowd: hearts, penguins, and art, and the sneakers embody the rigor of personal touch that one hopes will
kisses, like a digital box of chocolates. and the humor that Kare has always continue into our digital future on a
A sixty-four-pixel palette would seem brought to the task of making icons, deeper level than fingerprint readers.
like a big step up, but Kare doesn’t which resonate across the decades. She gave the Mac a smile—where’s
think detail necessarily makes better A redditor helpfully identified the ro- the smile now?In the early 1980s,
icons. “Simple images can be more bots—Monster from Macross (1983), Apple asked a young artist named
inclusive,” she said. MR-11 Bulldozer Robo/Dozer (1982), Susan Kare to design some graphics
Look at traffic signs: “There’s a rea- and, on Twitter, Daniel Mallory Ort- for its forthcoming personal computer,
son the silhouettes of kids in a school berg made a proposal: „building a the Macintosh. Kare had never worked
crossing sign don’t have plaid lunch- time machine for the express purpo- in the tech industry and didn’t have
boxes and superhero backpacks, se of going to 1985 and marrying the any experience with computers. But
even though it’s not because of tech- woman who invented the trash icon she had a background in a variety of
nology limitations,” she said. “Those for macs because OH MY GOD“In a art forms, from mosaics to needlepo-
would be extraneous details.”Kare’s 2000 interview with Alex Soojung-Kim int, and a PhD from New York Univer-
personal style is distinctly unfussy. Pang, now a researcher at Institute for sity, having written her dissertation on
the use of caricature in sculpture. As it
turned out, this diversity of experience
was exactly what Apple needed.
Kare’s artistic background made her
well-equipped to aid in Steve Jobs’
ambition to create the world’s first
friendly computer. She was accusto-
med to finding inspiration in everyt-
hing from hieroglyphs to street signs,
and by bringing a diverse range of in-
fluences to the Mac.
CONVINCING WITH BOLDNESS
9
Japanese Woodcut for Apple
HOW
HOW TO TO BECOME
BECOME 10
SUCCESSFUL
SUCCESSFULH E Y ,
SUSAN...
Were you working on-site, at the would try to come up with a selection and Bill Atkinson would come in some-
Apple headquarters in Cupertino? of things tha t might work. We would times with features for MacPaint and
try them out, and the final design ask,“ What do you think we should call
Kare: Yes. I definitely learned on the would evolve from there. this?“ Now the lasso, I think maybe Bill
job. As when I went to Macintosh, The documents icon existed-- the did call it a „lasso,“ and had the form
there wasn‘t really an icon editor, but paper with the folded corner-- and I with the little slip knot, to make it like a
there was a way to turn pixels on and thought it was good that documents lasso. I refined his image to the „final“
off. I did some work on paper, but ob- look like documents; but I thought that lasso.For while there was going to be
viously it was much better to see it on applications needed to look more ac- a copy machine for making a copy of
the screen, so there was a rudimentary tive. That‘s when I came up with the a file, and you would drag and drop a
icon editor. First they showed me how icon that has a hand holding a pen- file onto it to copy it. That was visual
I could take the art and figure out the cil against a diamond. With that, you for a while, but then it went away. It
hex equivalent so it could be keyboar- could easily distinguish between do- turned out was hard to figure out what
ded in. Then Andy made a much bet- cuments and applications. I worked you could draw that people would see
ter icon editor that automatically ge- on the earliest MacPaint icon, which as a copier. I drew a cat in a mirror, like
nerated the hex under the icons. That was a brush that was painting, where „copy cat“ [Pang laughs]-- I tried a few
was how I did the first ones. I think I the document icon included an image ideas that were not practical.
did the fonts that way, going letter by that would associate it with an appli- We took a very common sense ap-
letter, before we had a font editor. cation.We never imagined how many, proach. People would ask for somet-
many icons there would eventually be. hing, and I would do what I thought
Were you working on a Lisa compu- There were 256 number sets available would work. I do remember always
ter, one of the first personal compu- for fonts, and that just seemed caver- trying-- and I still do to this day-- to
ters by Apple? nous-- we used only a few, and assu- provide a rich selection of choices,
med that number would accomodate and see what works.People would
Kare: No, on a Mac. Always on a Mac. third-party font development. have different suggestions.
Though my first Mac still had the Twig- I don‘t even remember that much ab-
gy floppy disk drive. The Finder di- I know some of the metaphors for out it. I remember being in a couple
splayed a floppy, and had draggable the interface changed over time: photo shoots, and that was interes-
titles and files. with Lisa, for example, the scroll bar ting. The Rolling Stone photographer
I didn‘t really have much computer is called the „elevator“ for a while. was very good, and because I‘m in
experience, but even then I found that I imagine that if you call something graphics it was interesting for me to
rudimentary Mac more appealing to an elevator rather than a scroll bar, see how people like that work. Most-
me than the Apple II. I was a typical or the name trash can changes over ly what I remember was being in my
customer that they were trying to at- time, that you would design diffe- cube [Pang laughs], and trying to get
tract, someone for whom the graphical rent icons; or that if you designed a done what needed to be done.
side of it would have been attractive. really cool icon, the name of a fea-
ture might change.
Did Andy and others have a clear
sense of what kinds of icons they Kare: When I came, the title bar was
needed-- a trash can, files-- or was always called the title bar, and I spent
the design more uncertain? a LOT of time working on different
designs for it. Should it have stripes,
Kare: I recall that things were pretty should it have little architectural de-
much open. The cursor existed. The- tails on the side? We were trying to
re was a paper with a folded corner. figure out what you do to highlight
I think when I started there existed a that name. I think the first font that I
trash can. I didn‘t invent that, Lisa had did was very much like Chicago-- we
one, though I refined it to make it our called it „Elefont“ at first, that was the
trash can. Since Lisa used pixels that placeholder name.
weren‘t square, even if one had wan- MacPaint was first called MacSketch,
ted to use the exact same thing in Mac but I don‘t think that had much effect
we would have had to adjust it. on the icons. Later, doing MacWrite
Now it seems so ancient, thinking and MacProject, I think the ideas for
about about this. Usually they tell me those always pretty clear. We definitely
what concepts they needed, and I talked about naming things in menus,
HEY, SUSAN...
11Solitaire Card for Microsoft
HOW
HOW
TO TO
BECOME
BECOME
SUCCESSFUL
SUCCESSFUL 12How long would it take to design a from them? Kare: I suppose Steve had some say in
selection of possibilities for a copier Kare: Oh, definitely - I think it‘s great that, but also - and this is my hazy me-
or trash can? to test things, I just think of it more mory - it was somewhat of a consen-
as - when I said „not scientific,“ really sus. I don‘t remember any big fights
Kare: Sometimes hours, sometimes what I meant was informal user tes- about any of that, or any big meetings
days. ting, showing a lot of people and just to decide what the icons were going to
asking them what they thought. When be. It more or less evolved, thanks to
Can you explain how the Icon Edi- choosing an icon for the fill function lots of people‘s help.
tor worked? Was it like a piece of in MacPaint, I tried paint rollers and
graph paper, and you clicked on the other concepts, but I guess the pou- I was re-reading Steven Levy‘s Insa-
squares to draw an image? ring paint can made the most sense nely Great last night, and it sounded
to people. Then there are constraints from his account as if Steve Jobs
Kare: That‘s pretty much it. I don‘t with a few things that are cursors that would look at the icons and say,
even remember very much about it have one hot pixel: we tried different „Yes this one, not this one.“
now, but it was a grid with squares things to see what functioned well,
that toggled from black to white. Af- and was easy to aim with. And some Kare: I think he did, because he usu-
ter a while, I started using MacPaint to details came from the programmers: ally came in at the end of every day.
make the icons, and it had all the clas- I didn‘t design the coupon-looking He‘d always want to know what was
sic MacPaint features of being able square marquee, whoever designed new, and he‘s always had good tas-
to see the image enlarged and actual that functionality came up with that, te and a good sense for visual details.
size at the same time, and being able and I tweaked it. Another time, Andy But I don‘t remember any formal mee-
to draw circles and lines and erase. wanted to do a number puzzle, so I did tings. He had ideas, but I was happy
I think with the first icon editor you the graphics for that. to mock up good ideas from anyone.
could only toggle pixels, so it was gre-
at to use MacPaint. I remember that from my very first Was it a big change working in this
Macintosh. kind of collaborative environment
So what was it that would define a with software people, compared to
really successful icon? Did you have Kare: The puzzle, and the note pad, the stuff you‘d been doing before? It
some sense going into the project and some of the other things in the sounded like in some of your earlier
of what you thought a good icon control panel, I worked on those with graphic work, you worked pretty in-
would look like? Andy. I still have on my business card dependently.
the rabbit (for my fax number) and tele-
Kare: It‘s not usually my way to say, phone from the original control panel. Kare: There‘s was noting to get adjus-
„This is it.“ As I said, I tried to make ted to. Lots of long hours, but I don‘t
a selection and get people‘s opinions. What did the rabbit stand for? remember anything particularly diffi-
cult in adjusting to the job.
I like to think that good icons are in- Kare: There was a rabbit and tortoise,
stantly recognizable - even if someo- and they signified „fast“ and „slow“ I was thinking as much about diffe-
ne‘s never seen it, you can ask them time between mouse clicks, I think - rent as opposed to difficult.
what it does, and they get it - or it‘s something to do with speed.
so easy to remember that if someone Kare: I‘d had lots of other jobs working
tells you want it is once, it‘s easy to So who did you informally show with groups of people.
remember when you look at it. I think your work to?
that‘s a lot to ask of a symbol, that if
you tested it everyone would all have Kare: I‘d say most of the people in the
the same one-word response as its software group, and other people in
function. But I think I had then, and the Mac group who might wander in.
still have, more of a common sense Steve Jobs would wander in-- Lots of
than a scientific approach to that kind people from the group would wander
of thing. in.
Some people were big advocates of At what point, or who was it who
user testing. With the icons, did you said, „Let‘s definitely go with this
just show them to people, or did you one, rather than these?“
try to get a more systematic sample
HEY, SUSAN...
13HOW TO TO
HOW BECOME SUCCESSFUL
BECOME 14
SUCCESSFULCONVINCING
W I T H
ORIGINALITY
„If you ever
She made the brave new digital world
feel decidedly familiar.The fact that the
Mac had a graphical user interface at
study art all was exciting in its own right. But
Kare’s joyful icons made the com-
history, you puter look truly unique. Whereas the
IBM PC, released in 1981, was, as PC
know not-
World’s Benj Edwards put it, designed
to look like a “serious computer for
serious business,” the Mac—thanks
hing is ever to Kare—made using a computer look
downright fun.
really new.“ You’re probably familiar with Kare’s
work, even if you don’t know it. Her sui-
te of icons for the original Macintosh in
1984 helped people learn to navigate
an unfamiliar technology—the perso-
nal computer—with help from intuiti-
ve symbols. A tiny stopwatch urged
users to have patience while an ap-
plication loaded, while Kare’s “Happy
Mac” greeted users with a reassuring
smile as they booted up their compu-
ters. “One of the stated goals for the ence and open-minded, exploratory you look at that blank canvas and say,
Macintosh project was that the com- approach to design, our digital world ‘Now I’m going to create a masterpie-
puter should be friendly and appeal to might be a lot less friendly. ce’—that’s just foolhardy.”“You can
non-technical users,” Kare said in an When Apple and Kare found each an- set out to make a painting, but you
email. “Because it took a bit of time other in 1982, she was living in Palo can’t set out to make a great painting.”
for the software to launch, I was as- Alto and in the midst of “welding a Among Kare’s enduring legacies is the
ked to design an icon so people would life-sized razorback hog” as a statue way her icons have integrated a wide
know something was happening. A for a museum in Arkansas. Her friend range of cultures into our everyday
smile just seemed like a good way to from high school, Andy Hertzfeld, was computer culture. Kare based the
infuse a positive spin on the icon of working on Apple’s Macintosh team, Macintosh “command” symbol (⌘), for
the computer.” Kare’s overall aesthetic and he got in touch to see if she might example, on a sign used on Swedish
was playful and reassuring. Even the want to create some graphics for their campgrounds to denote interesting
horror of encountering a system failure new project. locations. “It lent itself to being digi-
was somewhat mediated by her icon Duly intrigued, she bought some tal without being jagged,” she said in
of choice, a plucky cherry bomb with graph paper from the art supply store a 2000 interview with Alex Pang for
a lit fuse. In the years since the Mac’s and began sketching, filling in the tiny Stanford University.
debut, Kare has brought her warm, squares with a pink marker in order She also drew inspiration from pirates,
clever style to a number of other tech to imitate Apple’s pixelated displays. ancient hieroglyphs, books on craft
giants, designing everything from the Soon she graduated to creating her and folklore, and from the Symbol
playing cards for Microsoft’s famously designs on an icon editor in Apple’s Sourcebook, a 1972 guide to graphic
addictive game of Solitaire to Face- Cupertino headquarters. Kare remem- symbols that includes everything from
book’s virtual gifts, which the platform bers the period as a time in which she astrological signs to the markings that
offered from 2007 to 2010. was surrounded by smart, creative hobos left behind on buildings to help
Today, she works as Pinterest’s crea- people who were happy to be wor- guide one another on their travels.
tive designer, where she’s made king together on something new and
her mark by designing, among ot- exciting, but unaware of how big the
her things, the brand’s signature red Mac would become. “You can set out
pushpin.Before landing the job at to make a painting, but you can’t set
CONVINCING WITH ORIGINALITY
Apple, Kare had dreamed of designing out to make a great painting,” she told
greeting cards for Hallmark. It’s a real Steve Silberman in the introduction
stroke of luck that she turned out wor- to the book Susan Kare Icons, which
king in tech instead. Without her influ- was excerpted in Fast Company. “If
15HOW TO TO
HOW BECOME SUCCESSFUL
BECOME 16
SUCCESSFULCONVINCING
W I T H
EMPATHY
„When you font that was particularly useful in the
pre-emoji era, which allowed people
have a lot to insert images of palm trees, mit-
tens, and treble clefs with a stroke of
of detail, it the keyboard.
The most famous dingbat in Cairo was
looks like
the dogcow, a sweet and spotted crit-
ter who gained celebrity status start-
ing in the late 1980s, when Apple’s
somebody software used him to illustrate the
orientation of the page, in either land-
else. But scape or portrait mode, that users had
selected to print.)
when it‘s
Today, Kare continues to daw inspi-
ration both from books—a tome on
more car-
Kanji pictograms is another favorite—
and from the sights she encounters in
her travels, online and off. “I often find
tooney, an- myself taking photos, for example,
of images stenciled on the sidewalk,
yone can handmade signs, interesting packa-
ging, or warning labels on trucks,”
see themsel-
Kare told Quartz. “And of course, on
The diversity of her sources helped derstand what’s possible, and work my daily trip around the internet I save
her find imaginative ways to commu- from there. That’s true in most design random images and often get graphic
ves in that nicate abstract ideas. “‘Undo’ remains
an unsolved problem (claw hammer
projects, not just digital. I still believe
that just because you can use millions
inspiration from Pinterest.”
Her more contemporary digital de-
image.“ pulling out a nail?) along with a num-
ber of other perennially tough verbs to
symbolize: sort, save, inspire,” Kare
of colors and hundreds of fonts, you
don’t need to use them all in every
project.”Kare was also charged with
signs, like her early work for the Mac,
are a testament to Kare’s continued
ingenuity. Though her images live on
explained. designing original fonts for the Mac. our screens, her attention to detail
An additional challenge was remem- “The chance to create a set of bitmap gives them movement and life. Con-
bering to accommodate international (pixel) fonts for the Macintosh was a sider the virtual gifts she designed for
users with icons that didn’t rely on the terrific opportunity because the new Facebook: a nut brownie looks more
English language. Kare briefly expe- path-breaking technology enabled delectable because it’s surrounded by
rimented with using an icon of a cat proportionally spaced characters—an a scattering of crumbs, while a lime-
in a mirror (“copycat”) as the icon for “i” and an “m” could have different green popsicle gains credibility becau-
“copy,” but quickly relinquished the widths,” Kare told Quartz. “Most ear- se it’s slightly melted in the imaginary
idea; puns didn’t translate as well as lier computer fonts were monospa- heat. More recently, Pinterest opened
one thought. “Technical constraints ced.” In contrast to the smooshed-to- a cafe at its San Francisco headquar-
don’t necessarily hamper creativi- gether fonts that prevailed at the time, ters in 2018 selling Kare-designed
ty.”All of these considerations meant Kare’s fonts “allowed text to breathe mugs, stickers, and enamel pins. One
that Kare had to approach her work as as naturally on the Mac’s white screen pin shows a pair of bunny ears, meant
if solving a puzzle. “I find it really inte- as it does in the pages of a book,” to signify the joy of getting sucked into
resting to solve that problem of, how Steve Silberman writes in the Fast an internet rabbit hole. Another shows
do you make a concept in 16-by-16 Company excerpt. Pinterest’s signature pushpin—made
black and white dots?” she told Pang. Her fonts for the Mac included Chica- more lovable, naturally, with the addi-
While she’s not necessarily a fan of go (the Mac’s default san-serif typefa- tion of a smiley face.
limitations, she understands how to ce through system 7.6 in 1997, as well
work within them. “Technical cons- as on early versions of iPods), New
traints (such as working in black and York, Monaco, the wacky San Fran-
white, or limited screen real estate) cisco (originally named Ransom, be-
don’t necessarily hamper creativity,” cause its collage of letters looked like
CONVINCING WITH EMPATHY
she told Quartz. “It’s just good to un- a ransom note), and Cairo—a dingbat
17HOW
HOW
TO TO
BECOME
BECOME
SUCCESSFUL 18
SUCCESSFULCONVINCING
W I T H
HUMOR
„Make it so No great technological revolution can
succeed without an artistic sleight of
use, relatable workstation. As the first
low-cost personal computer for non-
pored through old symbology books
for hours and saw the Saint Hannes
simple your hand. Susan Kare, known as the “wo-
man who gave the Macintosh a smile,”
technical consumers, it was imperati-
ve that the Macintosh icons be univer-
cross, an ancient symbol also used by
Scandinavians in the 1960s to mark
mom could
has spent her three-decade career at sally inviting and intuitive. Since Kare locations of cultural interest.
the apex of human-machine interac- had scant experience designing in the Kare also pioneered the first propor-
tion. Through her intuitive, whimsical digital realm, she drew from her expe- tionally spaced digital font family.
use it.“ iconography, she made the graphic
user interface accessible to the mas-
rience with mosaics, needlepoint, and
pointillism. After procuring “the smal-
Operating under the constraint of only
9-by-7 dots per letter, Kare was able
ses, and ushered in a new generation lest graph paper” she could find in an to avoid the jagged, pixelated look of
of pixel art.In the early 1980s, Kare— art supply store, Kare drew out a 32- monospaced computer typefaces by
then a sculptor and tech-world out- by-32 grid. Each of the 1,024 squares enlisting only horizontal, vertical, or
sider—pivoted to a graphic designer represented a pixel, mimicking the 45-degree lines.One resulting typefa-
role at Apple. There, she created some bit-mapped display of the early Apple ce, Chicago, was used on the Macin-
of the most recognizable icons, type- interface. She proceeded to hand- tosh and iPod for more than two de-
faces, and graphic elements in perso- sketch many of the early Apple icons, cades.Through all of her challenges,
nal computing: the command symbol pixel by pixel. Kare always operated with a whimsi-
(⌘), the system-failure bomb, the paint Each sketch began with a comp- cal charm and an independent streak.
brush, and, of course, “Clarus the ter function, like “boot” or “debug.” She once festooned Apple’s office
Dogcow.” With little more than a few Utilizing an eclectic pool of sources with a pirate flag, complete with a sig-
dots on a screen, Kare created a can- ranging from pirate lore to ancient nature rainbow-colored eye patch, an
vas of approachable visual metaphors hieroglyphics, Kare then conceptuali- ode to the team’s infamous motiva-
that are instantly recognizable deca- zed the jargon into a digestible visual tional quote: “It’s better to be a pirate
des later. metaphor. The command symbol, for than join the navy.”
Early on, Kare found a sanctum in fine instance, was conceived when Kare
art. After earning a Ph.D. from New
York University, she went westward
to take a curatorial job at the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco. She
soon migrated down to Palo Alto—the
birthplace of Apple and other Silicon
Valley giants.In 1982, Kare received a
call from Andy Hertzfeld, a high school
friend whom she’s known since age
14. Hertzfeld, then one of the early
members of the Macintosh team at
Apple, was looking for a designer and
had Kare in mind.
An artist at heart, she was working on
a welded sculpture of a life-size razor-
back hog as a commission for a mu-
seum in Hot Springs, Arkansas at the
time. “My ideal life would be to make
art full-time. I had the chance to do
that with this commission,” Kare said
in an interview with Stanford Universi-
ty in 2000. “I really enjoyed making this
sculpture; but it was kind of solitary,
so it was interesting for me to segue
from that to working at Apple.”Once
at Apple, Kare was entrusted with a
daunting task: to use iconographies
to make the Macintosh feel less like
CONVINCING WITH HUMOR
a machine and more like an easy-to-
19HOW HOW
TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL
TO BECOME 20
SUCCESSFULCONVINCING
W I T H
CONFIDENCE
„I felt as if I No colleague - not even Steve Jobs
himself - was safe from being rende-
feed. Her iconography has been fea-
tured at the National Museum of Ame-
to remember.In the digital era, whe-
re visual pollution clogs the Web, her
could do my red in pixel art form. And then there
was “Clarus the Dogcow,” an ambi-
rican History, MoMA, SFMOMA, and
the New Mexico Museum of Natural
simplicity-driven philosophy enjoys a
heightened relevance. Now an icon in
job, and that
guous-looking animal icon Kare de- History and Science in Albuquerque. her own right, Kare does too. Susan
signed as a part of Apple’s Cairo font. She’s done design work for more than Kare designed the suite of icons that
Clarus gained such a cult following 50 major clients, including Microsoft, made the Macintosh revolutionarya
was not any that Kare still produces prints of the
icon for its many fans.
Intel, IBM, Motorola, and Sony Pictu-
res.But throughout the years,
computer that you could communica-
te with. Every fifteen minutes or so, as
kind of In 1988, Kare launched her own firm,
Susan Kare Design, which she main-
Kare has strictly adhered to a design
philosophy that rests on the tenets
I wrote this story, I moved my cursor
northward to click on the disk in the
problem or tains today. In the ensuing decades,
she has successfully adapted to the
of simplicity, clarity, and beauty. And
though she’s upgraded her tools from
Microsoft Word toolbar that indicates
“Save.” This is a superstitious move,
issue.“
ever-shifting tides of technology. Bet- graph paper to design software, Kare as my computer automatically saves
ween 2006 and 2010, she designed continues to place a premium on con- my work every ten minutes. But I lear-
hundreds of virtual gifts for Face- text and metaphor. On the streets of ned to use a computer in the era be-
book—a brilliant, full-color suite of San Francisco, she intrepidly hunts fore AutoSave, in the dark ages when
cupcakes, penguins, and rubber du- for catchy symbols and shapes; once remembering to save to a disk often
ckies that departed from the two-di- inspiration strikes, she works within stood between you and term-paper
mensional pixel art she’d designed a grid-like template in Adobe Illust- disaster. The persistence of that disk
at Apple. Today, Kare continues to rator—a tool to help her visualize the icon into the age of flash drives and
sell her prints on kareprints.com, and constraints of the device on which her cloud storage is a sign of its power. A
works as a creative director at Pin- user will view her icons. disk means “Save.” Susan Kare desig-
terest, where she focuses on adding Each icon, she contends, must not ned a version of that disk, as part of
meaning and clarity to the platform’s only be easy to understand, but easy the suite of icons that made the Mac-
intosh revolutionary—a computer that
you could communicate with in pictu-
res. Paola Antonelli, the senior cura-
tor of architecture and design at the
Museum of Modern Art, was the first
to physically show Kare’s original icon
sketches, in the 2015 exhibit “This is
for Everyone.”
“If the Mac turned out to be such a re-
volutionary object––a pet instead of a
home appliance, a spark for the imagi-
nation instead of a mere work tool––it
is thanks to Susan’s fonts and icons,
which gave it voice, personality, style,
and even a sense of humor. Cherry
bomb, anyone?” she joked, referring
to the icon which greeted crashes
in the original operating system. Af-
ter working for Apple, Kare designed
icons for Microsoft, Facebook, and,
now, Pinterest, where she is a creative
director. The mainstream presence of
Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, emoji,
and gifs is a sign that the visual revolu-
tionaries have won: online, we all com-
municate visually, piecing together
CONVINCING WITH CONFIDENCE
sentences from tiny-icon languages.
21Icons for Apple
HOWHOW
TO BECOME
TO BECOME
SUCCESSFUL
SUCCESSFUL 22CONVINCING
W I T H
PIXELS
Kare Dingbats Fonts for Apple „How To Become Successful. Lear- female agency owners. Why? How
ning From Susan Kare“, concept and about female artists? This is about en-
design: Theresa Günther. This work couraging women to become interes-
was created as part of the workshop ted in leading positions and breaking
„Bringing into Light - Portraits of down social roles. The success stories
strong Women“ at the Muthesius Uni- of strong women show it is possible to
versity of Fine Arts and Design. Super- get to the top. The task: Hey ladies*:
vision: Prof. Silke Juchter, subject area find your heroines, shed light on their
of concept and drafting, in coopera- achievements, show their potentials.
tion with Margitta Dunkel, communi- With big formats, in folders of 50 x
cation coach. In February 2020. The 35 cm. https://konzept-und-entwurf.
In her career, Susan Kare worked for situation: The proportion of women muthesius-kunsthochschule.de/arbei-
many companies, including Apple, Mi- studying communication design at the ten/?type=stud
CONVINCING WITH PIXELS
crosoft, Facebook, and Pinterest. She MKH is 84%. Getting started in the
received the AIGA medal in 2018 for creative sector goes well. But: The-
her inventive designs. re are only 8% female CDs, just 3% * and boys
23„Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.“ HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 24
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