Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac
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Who is Susan Kare and how did she become the Macintosh’s original iconographer?
Hello? I'm Susan Kare and Now for something completely different. Um I've been an iconographer and designer. of um worked on a lot of tech projects and I wanna talk about A tech startup I worked for when even though the Macintosh group was part of Apple, but I think a lot of the experiences resonate with some of the um topics that I've heard here today. So I've been doing this for a while and love it. Here's a few things that I designed over the years. And it's funny because this was really a North Star for the Macintosh group. But when I reread it in the last couple of days, it just kind of reminded me of AI and so many things that are being developed now. And Paul Rand is a celebrated graphic designer, no longer with us, who did the UPS logo and IBM logo and so many images that
Have persisted And I was lucky to work with him and something he told me was always focus on making things meaningful and memorable. And I think the heart of that is have a good idea and then the form will follow. Um I was a total art major, didn't know anything about computers, and was lucky enough to work at Apple on the Macintosh as the Macintosh artist. And Um before I went to Apple, I was welding a life-size Razorback hog for a museum in Arkansas. And I thought I was living my dream going out to my garage. w welding all day, but in truth it was a little bit lonely. And I was glad I had the experience, but it kinda made me hungry for working with a team. And my high school friend, Andy Hertzfeld, was a system software programmer at Apple and he knew I had worked on the yearbook and liked art and he said he needed some images to display on a new computer that was being worked on.
And he showed me the display which didn't have a case and said, could I come in for an interview? um to work on some small symbols and some typefaces. And I said, sure. I thought it sounded great and really interesting and something I hadn't done before. So I thought about it. I had a little bit of typographical experience from working at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia. I used a machine like this to make labels for exhibits. And I was pretty good at Lettraset, rub-down type. I could do it really straight and get the kerning right. But I went to the and I had a PhD in art history. So um those were my credentials. And I went to the library in Palo Alto and took out some books about typography and some
font sample books and actually brought them to my interview under my arm so I would seem as if I knew what I was talking about. And Andy also suggested to me that it would be good if I could make some examples of uh essentially bitmap graphics, but using graph paper and he didn't really specify what to make, so some things I made like a pun with a boot and some pieces of paper and you could see I on this slide there's a little bit of an ABC but I just tried to make some examples and um these are more of the examples. Sort of funny because Some of these really random things slightly influenced what we ended up using in the software. So I I spoiled the surprise, but I got the job. And um I don't think anybody even asked me any questions about uh font design, despite my prep.
What led Susan Kare from art‑history PhD to an interview with Andy Hertzfeld at Apple?
and In a funny twist of fate, as much as I had wanted to be an artist. Um now that notebook with those early icons that I took to my interview is in the permanent collection of MoMA. So it just so hang on Definitely hang on to your stuff. So um When I got to Apple um the first day, This screen was shown to me to say this is what it's your job to improve. And Um fonts and the the round rects that are on the five and a quarter inch floppy drawing are um could become icons, but they were able with a cursor to click and drag those around. So it already had a little seemed kinda magical to me. And we definitely changed do it to okay because do it was a little off color and people read it as Dolt. So um I wanted to make a new system font and make some icons.
So and it was um told to me it was very sincere that um We were trying to make a computer that anyone could use.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Susan Kare and how did she become the Macintosh’s original iconographer?
0:07–5:15
2
What led Susan Kare from art‑history PhD to an interview with Andy Hertzfeld at Apple?
5:15–12:53
3
How did early constraints (16×16 black‑and‑white pixels) shape the first Mac icons?
12:53–19:48
4
Why did Susan Kare design the Chicago font and what made it revolutionary for the Mac?
19:48–25:09
5
What is the story behind the Happy Mac and the Command key symbols?
25:09–32:28
6
Which design lessons did Susan learn from Paul Rand, Steve Jobs, and the original Mac team?
32:28–43:02
7
What practical advice does Susan share about iteration, constraints, and memorable design?
43:02–48:48
8
How has Susan Kare’s icon work evolved after Apple – from Pinterest to crypto wallets?
48:48–51:42