Susan Kare

Originally an art major, working at store in Palo Alto

Was brought into the orbit of personal computing by high school friend Andy Hertzfeld[] (GOATED Apple engineer) when they needed help with graphics

Agreed with understanding that Apple was looking to introduce a more humanistic computing machine

Showed up to Apple with a stack of typography books, not fully sure of what the job would be like

Identified a set of skills she didn’t think were qualifications, but had confidence. Telling of her swagger, strong presence.

She was faced with: “hey can you make this look better?”

Design problem: create a set of typefaces and symbols to improve the screen design

Saw the magic of clickable GUI, and was already impressed, but the GUI was still pretty rough

Kare’s designs are so iconic that it’s hard to get a screenshot of the pre-Kare Apple GUIs

Constraints: 32x32 grid of black/white squares

First thing she did was design the Chicago typeface(1982) as a bold font to stand out in windows

She viewed things as jaggedy, ‘didn’t seem like rocket science’ to make things more rounded.

Acknowledges the mistakes, such as ‘x’

First Apple iPod (2001) used the same Chicago font

first San Francisco font (1983)

Francisco Sans (lol)

Recalled wincing at her notes for the Mac User Interface guidelines: so simple ‘your mom could use it’… pushes back and winces because it should have been ‘anybody’

She admits to feeling intimidated by computers

Felt apple 2 to be a ‘little daunting’

https://youtu.be/4lx9Wtd2P48?t=490

Apple smiley face was informed by lack of detail meaning universality

https://laurenericksondotcom.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/scott-mccloud-understanding-comics/

By making things simple, you don’t exclude anybody

(Counter to the color tones of emojis)

Andy Hertzfeld writes icon editor, enables Kare to get away from graph paper almost immediately

She feels the power of computing in practicality: toggle views instead of erasing or completely redoing

Lots of iteration -> editing is the sauce for being able to develop things 

Thought about applications in two ways: the ‘verbs’ (acts of operation) and the ‘documents’ (objects being performed)

In alerts icons: cropped faces to preserve universality / non-genderness

Decided against hourglasses, instead used ticking watch as icon

The printer icon taught her not to make things that look like actual technological objects, because their design is subject to obsolescence 

Detail is lard, makes things harder to recognize at a glance

Designed the command symbol, which was originally an apple

Steve Jobs: “change it, that’s our crowned jewel (logo)… have apple farms in all our menus”

Looked at books when she was at a loss for something, looked in a symbol dictionary one day and found inspiration for the command icon. The icon represented “feature”… book said in Swedish campgrounds. Gothenburg airport. Derivation of Scandinavian castle for tarots (Borgholm Castle)

Believed in proposing alternatives, introducing ideas

When she moved to Microsoft (1990, at dawn of Windows 3.0) she began using color

Designed solitaire cards - the addictive ones we all know

Worked on Sony MagicLink

Did Facebook for virtual gif project (2007) As way of expression graphics - at a time when they you couldn’t even upload your own images/photos yet

Challenge: “what can you draw in a 64x64 cube that would make people spend a dollar?”

Sold the most: bears and penguins

Always get all the info and constraints up front. This is what gives you the creativity.

Except for Paul Rand. He just does it.

Works at Pinterest now.: a happy and inspiring place in what can be an otherwise cold internet (her words!)