susan kare made digital history. the macintosh bomb... she's the inventor of thousands of icons .....................................................................................

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susan kare is the queen of icons


susan kare’s designs have become an integral part
of the computer culture.
she is a 2001 recipient of the chrysler design award.

kare, who’s office is based in san francisco,
designed most of the distinctive icons, typefaces and
other graphic elements that gave the original
macintosh computer its characteristic appearance.

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some of her most famous icons
the trash can (for discarding files),
the watch (which means the computer is busy and
can't be used), and the portrait of a computer with
a sly mona lisa smile (which means the machine is
working).

‘I do every job myself because I think of it as an art’.
with the icon and font work, she wants to help counter the
stereotypical image of computers as cold and intimidating.
‘my work has continued to be motivated by respect for,
and empathy with, users of software’, she said,
kare began to master a peculiar sort of minimal pointillism
and spent her days designing understandable visual
metaphors for computer commands.

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pixels
unlike earlier computers, the macintosh featured a
‘bit- mapped’ display in which each point of light,
or pixel, on the screen was individually controlled by
a single ‘bit’ of computer data.
it was a matter of deciding which bits to turn on and turn off.

the macintosh icons consist of a grid 30 pixels by 30 pixels.
900 dots in all.

’I pay attention to every dot’, kare said.
‘the tile mosaics of the romans can be thought of as an
early form of bit-mapped graphics, similar techniques
appear in medieval weavings and tapestries.’

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colors
her icons tend to be rendered in bright, primary colors.
‘just because you have millions of colors doesn't mean
that you have to use them all the time’, she said.

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simplicity
adding too many details to
an icon renders the result less legible on a computer screen.
but using too few details obscures the meaning of the icon.’

‘I've done trash trucks, trash bags, plastic garbage cans,
aluminum trash cans, wire trash baskets, wastebaskets
and even fires’, she said, referring to the variations on icons
for ‘delete’.

I believe that good icons are more akin to road signs
rather than illustrations, and ideally should present an
idea in a clear, concise, and memorable way.’

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recognizable
she does not strive to make the action represented by
each icon instantly recognizable. her goal is to make
them easy to remember. ‘I would say an icon is
successful if you could tell someone what it is once and
they don't forget it’, she said.
‘some icons are easy because they're nouns: a calender,
for example,’ kare said. ‘but verbs are hard to do.
undo is especially hard.
I struggle year in and year out about undo.’

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influence
kare has her gurus.
she gives credit to paul rand and saul steinberg.

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today
‘I'd rather do the work than be out representing the business.’
current work that intrigues her is having the opportunity to
improve the quality of small monochrome icons and typefaces
in fast-proliferating handheld devices, in addition to the larger
and more colorful images on computer monitors.

‘I still spend my days turning dots on and off and I'm always
perfecting scissors.’



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susan kare's biography


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http://www.kare.com
http://www.chryslerdesignawards.com
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some of macintosh's icons designed by susan kare





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