Susan Kare: How I Designed the Original Apple Mac Icons

Susan Kare, an art school graduate with no computer background, was hired by Apple in the early 1980s to design icons and typefaces for the Macintosh computer. She describes her unconventional path to the role, including preparing sample bitmap graphics on graph paper for her interview and discovering that her interview notebook eventually became part of MoMA's permanent collection.

Kare emphasizes several core design principles that guided her work. She was inspired by Paul Rand's philosophy to focus on making things meaningful and memorable, with form following from good ideas. Working within constraints—specifically 16x16 black-and-white pixels initially—she developed the Chicago font and created the first Macintosh icons. She explains the importance of using simple details that allow universal recognition and personal projection, citing Scott McCloud's principle that simpler designs are more universally understood than overly detailed ones.

The transcript covers specific design decisions, such as creating the Happy Mac boot screen icon, designing proportionally-spaced fonts (New York, Geneva, and ransom fonts), and developing the Command key symbol (the cloverleaf feature) after Steve Jobs rejected using multiple apples in the menu. She describes collaboration with Bill Atkinson on MacPaint and reflects on mistakes, including the bomb icon for system failure that alarmed users who feared their computers would explode.

Kare then discusses her career beyond Apple, including work at Microsoft on Windows 3.0 with 16 colors, projects with Facebook's virtual gift shop, Pinterest, General Magic, and various logo design work. Throughout, she integrates advice from mentors and colleagues: Paul Rand's insistence on discipline and meaning in design; Daniel Nord's principle of 'show don't tell'; Alan Kay's observation about proportionally-spaced fonts; and her father's realistic perspective on fundraising and business challenges.

The presentation concludes with reflections on startup culture, team dynamics at Apple (where everyone kept sleeping bags in their cubes), and lessons about iteration, showing multiple options rather than single concepts, and the importance of simplicity in visual design that can endure over time.