Original MacIntosh Icons — Susan Kare (1984)
In 1984 the first Apple ‘Mac’ computer was released featuring pixelated icons and new typeface ‘Chicago’ created by Susan Kare. These features were designed to fit in with the screen resolution which were extremely limiting at the time, especially in contrast to how far computer quality has become. Even as this technology progressed and there became less and less constraints the original fonts and icons stayed imperative to the Apple identity, even today the basic idea of icons such as the trash can are the same however, have been modernised by being rendered and interactive.
Susan Kare created these icons and fonts for Apple while she was creative director. All the iconic 8-bit style icons you still see today such as the bomb, trash can, watch and ‘fill’ paint can. These icons were specifically bitmapped for MacIntosh screens due to the strict restrictions technology brought at that time. All icons were monochromatic and the only way shading could be achieved was through the density of pixels. For example, the fewer pixels used the lighter the shade.
To begin the design of her icons, Susan Kare visited her local university art shop and purchased a $2.50 grid sketchbook so that she would be able to experiment with ideas due to the fact that there were no programmes that had been created to do this in any other way. In her sketches, each square represented a single pixel.
Susan Kare also went on to create icons for Windows PC and even bitmapped a virtual deck for a game of solitaire.
A collection of fonts were created for the first MacIntosh computer which were all named after major cities, ‘Chicago’ was the most important and was made by Susan Kare. Chicago lacks the typical features of a typeface that would usually be used on a computer in the early days of computer technology, it was san-serif which instantly gave it an overall modern look in comparison to other fonts. Kare created the font to be clear and legible, which it was even when the MacIntosh was on ‘grey mode’.
When the update Mac OS 8 came around in 1997 Chicago was replaced as the main typeface of Apple products by one named Charcoal which was even more clear to read, even at a small point size. However, Chicago was brought back in 2003 to be used for the third generation iPods.
