Susan Kare

Susan Kare (born 1954 in Ithaca, New York) is the original designer of many of the interface elements for the original Apple Macintosh. She joined Apple Computer after receiving a call from friend Andy Hertzfeld in 1983.

Kare is the designer of many typefaces, icons, and original marketing material for the Macintosh OS. Indeed, descendants of her groundbreaking work can still be seen in many computer graphics tools and accessories, especially icons such as the Lasso, the Grabber, and the Paint Bucket. An early pioneer of pixel art, her most recognizable works from her time with Apple are the Chicago typeface (the most prominent user interface typeface seen in Classic Mac OS, as well as the typeface used in the first three generations of the Apple iPod interface), the Geneva typeface, Clarus the Dogcow, the Happy Mac (the smiling computer that welcomed Mac users on starting their machines for 18 years, until Mac OS X 10.2 replaced it with a grey Apple logo), and the symbol on the Command key on Apple keyboards (also known as the Apple key).

After leaving Apple in 1985, she became one of the first ten NeXT employees. Since 1988, she has been a successful independent graphic designer working with clients such as Microsoft and IBM. Her projects for Microsoft included the card deck for Windows 3.0's solitaire game, as well as numerous icons and design elements for Windows 3.0. Many of her icons, such as those for Notepad and various Control Panel applications, remained essentially unchanged by Microsoft until Windows XP. For IBM she produced icons and design elements for OS/2; for Eazel she contributed iconography to the Nautilus file manager.

Kare received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Art from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her Ph.D. from New York University.

Pieces on Kare can be found at Design Boom and in Creative Review's September 2006 issue.