Iconic Visionaries of Design — Susan Kare
Examining The History of Infographics and Data Visualization
It has been a few months since our last installment of Iconic Visionaries. We have focused more lately on contemporary designers and since a recent article had me focused on the ‘year it all began’, I thought it be interesting to examine the visionary icons of Susan Kare.
Leave it to a would-be pirate to revolutionize design with 144 pixels and 12 point fonts, but that is exactly what she did working at Apple in the early 80's.
Simplicity, there just wasn’t another choice. Function, because that what was needed. Susan Kare created the Apple identity for so many users, almost as much as Steve Jobs. Sometimes she was merely translating his work. Sometimes she was just finding a simple picture for a simple purpose. But those decisions lived on long after her departure. They were iconic.
There is nothing grandiose about here designs, although they were clearly stylized. It is potentially that practical and unpretentious nature that has made them so enduring. In her time at NeXT, she did work for companies like IBM and Microsoft as well, so her work is far more pervasive than the simple Happy MAC icon.
I think I’ve always cared more about having work that people are using out in the world than the attribution. Very happy people are still clicking on a lasso icon 25 years later! — Susan Kare (from Business Insider)
At the risk of repeating myself — visualizations are tools. And while MAC went after “happy” people and Microsoft steered toward “productive” people, they are often one in the same. Susan’s work was easily a fit in both worlds. Today she is producing similar work for companies like Facebook & Digg. And while she may never find herself in such an opportunistic time and place to have the impact here original work did, it is still highly valued today.
In many ways, she is the “working girls visionary”. I wonder if that is a badge at Digg? Thanks for reading!
For more from Susan Kare consider:
