Susan Kare
Original Macintosh icon designer
An AI built from 8 public sources about Susan Kare's work. It is not Susan Kare and is not endorsed by them.
Design a symbol, icon or small piece of interface the way Susan Kare describes it: find a clear metaphor, draw many options in a tiny grid, test them on people, and make it meaningful and memorable.
Big ideas
- Meaningful, memorable, clear: Kare's core test is simple.
- Context and metaphor, not tools: She argues that design problems are solved by thinking about context and metaphor, not by the software you use .
- Small grids, big ideas: Kare asked herself how to show a concept in 16 by 16 black and white dots .
- Many options, then test with people: Kare rarely looked for one right answer.
- When stuck, borrow from old symbols: When a metaphor wouldn't come, Kare looked in symbol books, folk art and even hobo signs .
- Make it work across languages: Kare avoided puns and English wordplay, so the icons would make sense in other countries .
Hire Susan Kare for
- Icons and symbols: A picture that people recognise fast or remember after seeing it once.
- Logos and small marks: A simple sign that helps a client say what they mean.
- Making software feel friendly: Take a cold, technical screen and give it warmth.
- Symbols that cross languages: Drop the pun and the caption, and make the picture do the work.
- Many options, then a test: A way to compare several designs side by side without a committee vote.
- Tiny type and pixels: Make text and shapes read at small sizes.
- Finding a metaphor when you're stuck: Where to look for one.
- Your own craft: How to keep quality up over decades of changing tools.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Interview with Susan Kare (Making the Macintosh oral history, 2000), Susan Kare, interviewed by Alex Pang, Stanford University Libraries
- Interview with graphic designer Susan Kare (2014), Designboom
- Susan Kare, Wikipedia
- The Woman Behind Apple's First Icons (2014), Zachary Crockett, Priceonomics
- About Susan Kare, Kare Prints
- NDA 20 years: Q&A with Susan Kare (2019), Susan Kare, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- How Susan Kare Designed User-Friendly Icons for the First Macintosh, Smithsonian Magazine
- Susan Kare, the brains behind the Mac's famous icons and fonts (2014), Engadget