Susan Kare: An Iconic Graphic Designer
“I learned a lot about the cumulative value of attention to detail from Steve Jobs, and about pushing the limits of a medium. I still think about his philosophy of not showing too much information at once and the value of simplicity in visual messaging.” — Susan Kare
Isn’t it interesting how we see a trash can icon, and we immediately think “delete,” or maybe see a floppy disk icon (even though we don’t use floppy disks anymore), and we automatically think “save”? Well, it certainly hasn’t always been this way.
These ‘iconic’ icons (apologies for the bad wordplay) have roots that go back to the 1980s. Susan Kare, popularly known as the “Woman who gave Macintosh a smile”, designed this icon suite for Apple which was planning to release in 1984 which took the world by storm for decades to come.
Susan Kare is a Fine Arts Major from The New York University and has worked at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) as a sculptor, but sculpting and other fine arts would soon be the least memorable portion of her creative life.
One fateful day, she received a phone call from her friend Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team. He wanted her to design an icon suite and font elements for Apple.
This posed as a challenge for Susan since she had little to no experience in computer graphics. She did not let her inexperience in the technical field stop her, however. She channeled her inner artist into creating intuitive, easy-to-understand, visual cues for average users.
Kare started designing icons on simple a 32x32 grid notebook, and by colouring out the squares with mosaic-like, precision she was essentially ushering in a revolution in digital design. Each block in the grid represented a pixel. These pixels came together to create remarkably evocative symbols with a readability level that would even make designers today jealous of. Interestingly so, this was the same notebook she used when she was interviewing at Apple.
“The process reminded me of working needlepoint, knitting patterns or mosaics. I was lucky to have had a mother who enjoyed crafts.” -Susan Kare in Smithsonian Magazine
She had a goal in mind while designing for Apple. She wanted to humanize the Macintosh, seem more warm and friendly/approachable, rather than a cold machine. Hence, the “smile,” one of the most iconic formats of symbolic representation she created in her time at Apple.
“The happy Mac came from my love at 14 years old of those buttons with the smiley face. We had permission to be friendly. That was part of the brief. I love to make things friendly and humane- I find that so pleasurable.” — Kare
Her icons communicate their function in a concise, clear and memorable manner. Some of her most iconic designs are hung in the Museum of Modern Art.
Susan made sure the designs were simple, minimal, yet eye-catching. Well, she did a legendary job. She was awarded an AIGA medal in 2018, putting her into the top tier designers’ club, and why not, she revolutionized the way we look at icons today.
After her project with Apple, she went on to work with tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook and more, which earned her the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Her career has been one incredible journey because of all the ground-breaking work she did. Kare tried to counter the tech industry stereotype that it’s an exclusive domain for engineers, and served as an inspiration for all the graphic designers out there, that there is always room for everyone in every domain if your mind can think out-of-the-box and creative ways!
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
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