Susan Kare facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Susan Kare
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Kare in 2019
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| Born | February 5, 1954 Ithaca, New York, U.S.
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| Education | Mount Holyoke College (BA) New York University (MA, PhD) |
| Occupation | Graphic designer |
| Known for | Contemporary American design |
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Notable work
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GUI design language and product launch of the Macintosh |
| Spouse(s) |
Jay Tannenbaum
(div. 2011) |
| Children | 3 |
Susan Kare (born February 5, 1954) is an American artist and graphic designer. She helped create the pictures and fonts you see on computer screens, especially for the first Apple Macintosh computer from 1983 to 1986. She was one of the first employees and a creative director at NeXT, a company started by Steve Jobs after he left Apple.
Susan Kare has also worked as a design helper for big companies like Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, Facebook, and Pinterest. As of 2023, she works at Niantic Labs. She is known as a leader in pixel art and computer graphics. Many people see her as one of the most important designers in modern technology.
Contents
Early Life and Schooling
Susan Kare was born in Ithaca, New York. Her father was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He also directed a research center for taste and smell. Her mother taught her how to do special embroidery. Susan loved drawing, painting, and making crafts. Her brother, Jordin Kare, became an aerospace engineer.
She finished high school in 1971. In 1975, she earned a bachelor's degree in art from Mount Holyoke College. She then got her master's and Ph.D. degrees in fine arts from New York University in 1978. Her dream was to be an artist or a teacher.
Designing for Computers
Starting Her Design Journey
Susan Kare's career has always been about fine art. In high school, she learned about typography (designing text) and graphic design. She took many free design jobs to build her skills. She designed posters, brochures, holiday cards, and invitations. After getting her Ph.D., she moved to San Francisco. She worked at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as a sculptor and sometimes a curator. She later realized that making sculptures was too lonely. She wanted to do more collaborative work.
Working at Apple
In 1982, Susan Kare was making a large sculpture when her high school friend, Andy Hertzfeld, called her. He asked her to draw some icons (small pictures) and font elements for the new Macintosh computer. She had no experience with computer graphics or pixel art. So, she used her art skills from mosaics and needlepoint.
Andy suggested she use a small grid notebook to design icons. She drew many 32x32 pixel pictures for computer commands and programs. For example, she drew scissors for "cut," a finger for "paste," and a paintbrush for MacPaint. She joined the Apple team in January 1983. Her business card said "Macintosh Artist."
As a new computer user, she easily understood the Macintosh. She was excited by how she could design on the screen. She could undo, redo, and change an icon or letter. She could see it big and at its real size at the same time. She used existing drawing tools and helped improve the MacPaint program. She wanted to make the Macintosh easy and fun to use.
Susan's fun personality was a big part of the early Macintosh team. She surprised everyone by drawing their portraits using the Mac's 32x32 pixel style. She and another team member, Steve Capps, even sewed a pirate flag with a rainbow Apple logo. This showed Steve Jobs' idea that it was "better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
She worked closely with programmers to create many graphics. Steve Jobs himself approved her main desktop icons. Susan also helped with the Macintosh's launch in 1983. She appeared in magazines and on TV shows to show off the new computer.
In just one year, she designed the main look of the original Macintosh, which came out in January 1984. This included marketing materials, many typefaces (fonts), and icons. These designs created the first visual language for the Macintosh. They were key to Apple's new graphical user interface (GUI) computing.
She improved Apple's existing icons, like the trash can and the dog-eared paper icon. She also made sure that different types of documents had their own unique icons. Her team's GUI elements, like the Lasso and Paint Bucket, became common in computing.
Some of her famous icons include Clarus the Dogcow (seen when printing) and the Happy Mac (the smiling computer that greets users). She also designed the Command key symbol on Apple keyboards. Following Steve Jobs' love for calligraphy, she designed the world's first digital fonts where letters could have different widths. These included Chicago and Geneva. She also made the monospaced font Monaco. Chicago was her first font, used for menus and dialog boxes. She also created Cairo, a font made of icons, like early emojis.
Susan Kare later became a Creative Director at Apple. She loved learning from the engineers. She felt lucky to be an artist in a software group.
After Apple
In 1986, Susan Kare left Apple with Steve Jobs to start NeXT. She was the 10th employee and Creative Director. She even introduced Jobs to her design hero, Paul Rand, who designed NeXT's logo.
She later decided she wanted to go back to designing small pictures. So, she left NeXT to become an independent designer. She worked for many big companies like Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, and Intel. For Microsoft, she designed the card deck for the Windows 3.0 solitaire game. This game helped early computer users learn to use a mouse to drag and drop things. She also designed many icons and wallpapers for Windows 3.0. Many of her icons, like those for Notepad, stayed the same until Windows XP.
For IBM, she made icons for their OS/2 system. She also helped design the Nautilus file manager for a company called Eazel.
Between 2006 and 2010, she designed hundreds of 64x64 pixel icons for Facebook's virtual gifts. One of these, called "Big Kiss," is even used as a user account picture in some versions of Mac OS X.
Since 2008, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City has sold stationery and notebooks with her designs. In 2015, MoMA even bought her original sketchbooks for the Macintosh user interface.
In 2015, Kare started working at Pinterest as a product design lead. In 2021, she became a Design Architect at Niantic Labs. She also runs her own digital design business in San Francisco and sells prints of her art.
Her Design Ideas
Susan Kare's design rules are: meaning, memorability, and clarity. She believes good icons should be simple and easy to understand. She says "an icon is successful if you could tell someone what it is once and they don't forget it." She compares good icons to traffic signs: simple symbols with few extra details.
She loves solving the puzzle of making an image fit an idea. Her main goal with the Macintosh was to make it feel more human and friendly. She wanted to bring an artist's touch to the world of computers, which used to be only for engineers. Her Macintosh icons were inspired by many things, like art history, old gadgets, pirate stories, and Japanese symbols. For example, the Command key symbol on the Mac keyboard came from an old Scandinavian symbol for cultural places.
She was very good at designing with the limited technology of the 1980s. She used her art skills in mosaics and pointillism to create detailed pixel art. Even though her original fonts were very small (9x7 pixels per character), she made them look smooth by using only straight or 45-degree lines.
Today, she uses modern tools like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. But she still likes the idea of designing with small, simple pixels.
Her Impact
Susan Kare is seen as a leader in pixel art and computer graphics. She has spent over 30 years at the top of how humans and computers interact.
She helped create the original Macintosh computer. Her work set the visual style for Apple's new graphical computing. Her most famous designs at Apple include the first digital fonts where letters had different widths, like Chicago, Geneva, and Monaco. She also made countless icons and interface parts like the Lasso and Paint Bucket. Chicago was the main font used in classic Mac operating systems and the first four generations of the iPod. Her work was key to making the Macintosh one of the most successful computers ever. Her designs from the 1980s are still seen everywhere in computers and print today.
For decades, she has shared her design ideas with other big companies like Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Her icons have been shown in museums like the National Museum of American History and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Many people are big fans of her work. Large prints of her digital art are sold privately and at MoMA.
Personal Life
Susan Kare was married to Jay Tannenbaum. They divorced in 2011. She has three sons. Her brother was the aerospace engineer Jordin Kare.
See also
- List of Apple typefaces
Images for kids
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Kare in 2019
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Mac typefaces designed around 1983–84 by Susan Kare
