• Susan Kare Mac Icons
• Susan Kare Icons Png
• Susan Kare Mac Icons
• Susan Kare Mac Icons List
• Susan Kare Mac Icons Images

The original Happy Mac was designed by chief Mac iconist Susan Kare in November 1983. She translated standard desk items into beautiful little bitmap icons. Susan Kare’s icons and fonts for the original Macintosh were revolutionary. They gave a lifeless computer a warmth and personality that lives on in the modern Mac to this day. This month Susan Kare was awarded an AIGA medal, putting her in the company of design greats like Paul Rand, Charles and Ray Eames, Milton Glaser and Saul Steinberg.

Susan Kare’s work on the original Macintosh was revolutionary. For an industry that is full of geniuses constantly pushing the boundaries of computing and trying to create products better than the last, computing lacked one thing: the human element. Susan Kare’s icons for the original Mac lended themselves to being incredibly personable, relatable, and overall extremely different from intimidating computers of the past. It took words on the screen to cute little pictures and made things more easily comprehensible.

In specific, the smiling Mac icon as well as the bomb icon were quick indications of your computer health. If your computer was booting up correctly and everything was going to plan, your Mac would display itself smiling. If there was any sort of system error, a bomb icon would appear, indicating to the user that there was something wrong with the computer. Even as the bomb may be daunting, it quickly and easily depicted the state of the Mac. You didn’t need to understand an error message, or a code, or try and figure out why something isn’t working on your own, because that small little image would communicate everything you needed to know about the health of your computer.

Another icon from this original project worth mentioning is the floppy disk icon. It’s an outdated piece of technology from today’s perspective, but the ‘save’ option in most programs is still depicted as such. People grew to understand what the floppy disk symbolized, and it started with Susan Kare’s depiction on the original Mac in the 80s. Floppy disks were a piece of technology used to save data on, so having a picture of it made it self-explanatory and easier to use for newer users of the computer.

These icons eased newer computer owners into being able to easily use their Macs. Pictures made things easier to identify, and Susan Kare brought a likeness to these images never really done before on such a small scale. This was revolutionary, and a beginning for modern-day user interface graphics.

Bibliography:

Susan Kare Mac Icons

Campbell , Ollie. “The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple .” Milanote, milanote.com/the-work/the-story-behind-susan-kares-iconic-design-work-for-apple.

Susan Kare Icons Png

Back in May, London’s Design Museum launched an ongoing exhibition called California: Designing Freedom, a collection tracing the journey from 60s counterculture to Silicon Valley’s tech culture and how ‘Designed in California’ became a global phenomenon.

It’s impossible to think of the counterculture and Silicon Valley without considering Apple, and naturally, the exhibition has an entire section dedicated to the way the Mac revolutionised personal computing.

Check out Susan Kare’s original icon sketches for the Apple Macintosh graphic interface that revolutionised personal computing.

A key focus of the section is dedicated to the contribution of designer Susan Kare towards the Mac’s user interface. In particular, the user-friendly symbols she created, displayed through a collection of original rough sketches she drew on squared paper.

Chatting to It’s Nice That, exhibition curator Brendan McGetrick discussed how important it was to have Kare’s contributions to the Mac’s user interface a part of the show:

“The Mac was the first truly personal computer – one of its tag lines was ‘the computer for the rest of us’ – and it was designed to be used by theoretically everyone.

Susan designed the icons for the Macintosh’s graphical user interface. At the time, the notion of a GUI was revolutionary: just a few years prior to the Mac’s release, people could only interface with a computer through arcane commands written in code. By providing an image-based way to execute computer commands, the Macintosh made computers more intuitive and less intimidating.

As part of the original Mac team, Kare created some of the first digital fonts, the UI for MacPaint and some of the most persistent icons in computing such as the trash can/bin, the save disk and the smiling Mac. Kare added to the UI an element of friendliness and emotion. The icons that she designed were playful and simple enough to be recognisable to users around the world.”

Susan Kare Mac Icons

If you’re in London before October 17, be sure to check out the California: Designing Freedom exhibition at the Design Museum, London.

Check out some of Kare’s fascinating sketches of these iconic symbols below and more here.

Susan Kare Mac Icons List

Susan Kare Mac Icons Images

[see more here]