
The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple - oliebol
https://milanote.com/the-work/the-story-behind-susan-kares-iconic-design-work-for-apple
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neonate
What is the source of these quotes? If it's an original interview, you should
say so. If from somewhere else, you should say where and link to it.

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ghostly_s
To my recollection having just watched it a few months ago, the quotes and
figures are all pulled directly (and uncredited), from the talk she gave at
the Layers Design Conference, 2015. [1] Of course she's maybe given this same
talk on other occasions but the OP is a shoddy piece of work. The video's
worth your time if the topic interests you, she had some other interesting
anecdotes about the Apple days and her work after also. Just don't waste your
time with John Gruber's Q&A at the end, he wasn't on the same page as her at
all.

1\. [https://vimeo.com/151277875](https://vimeo.com/151277875)

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russellbeattie
Aww! Seems like she lost that fun New York accent she had.

[https://youtu.be/AY1-UYnaBm8](https://youtu.be/AY1-UYnaBm8)

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djsumdog
These basic designs pretty much stayed the course all the way through OS 9,
and some even in OS X. It's gotta be surreal to think something she designed
is on millions of devices. Reminds me of someone I met who wrote video drivers
for Intel. It's something small you don't think about, a tiny piece that is
essential in bringing the whole thing together.

Too often we think about the captains of the ships, the Gates and Bezos and
Musks of this world. People attribute so much to them, when all they really
did is convince other people with actual skill to make the things they wanted.
I doubt Elon could design the engine of a rocket. There are no Tony Starks
outside of the movies. There are 60 ~ 150 engineers who carefully design and
check each others work.

It's like when we see Columbus discovering the new world, even though so many
other civilizations had discovered it before him, ignoring all the ships and
crews that got him there, and the fact that the new world was named after
Amerigo Vespucci, the cartographer who actually mapped it out.

There are hundreds or thousands of engineers and designers like this one, who
are the people who really make these products real.

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pvg
Gates was quite heavily involved in making Microsoft's early products, long
before they had '60 to 150 engineers'. In the case of Jobs, the really
enduring mystery to me is that despite some seemingly disqualifying
personality flaws, he managed to both surround himself with very talented
people and get them to do outstanding work together. Once, you could chalk it
up to luck but somehow he did it repeatedly.

~~~
petard
I found the anecdotes from John Carmack about working with Jobs really
interesting in this regard. Apart from being probably very smart Jobs did care
a lot about the things they were building, and willing to throw everything
overboard if you could convince him that an existing approach was not the
right thing to do. It is something many managers or leaders lack IMHO, not
willing to do the "right thing" because of politics, market studies or
something else.

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pvg
I didn't get that impression from the Carmack stories at all. If you haven't
had a chance before, dig into the early Mac development history at
folkore.org. A number of the stories involve the team engaged in some (in
hindsight) hilarious and ridiculous effort to humor, misdirect or otherwise
manage Jobs in situations that arose primarily from him being profoundly,
stubbornly, catastrophically wrong. The eventual resolution never involves
Jobs saying 'ok, ok, you lot were right, let's do it your way'.

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brisance
>The eventual resolution never involves Jobs saying 'ok, ok, you lot were
right, let's do it your way'.

That would be un-becoming of a narcissist and a leader. What he would do, is
to do a 180 and claim that it was his idea all along. From a dispassionate
point of view this is actually good since all sides of a contentious issue can
be fully explored, but it sure feels shitty when someone steals your idea and
claims it as his own.

~~~
rusk
_> but it sure feels shitty when someone steals your idea and claims it as his
own._

Such is the life of the salaried employee.

There are advantages though, in that you don't have to run with the idea. You
can just go home in the evening and be with your kids.

Also, if it turns out to actually be a bad idea it's not your problem either!

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0xcde4c3db
Articles tend to pigeonhole her as an Apple designer, but that sells her
influence short; Kare also designed the icons for Windows 3.x and the cards
for Solitaire.

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netgusto
For those who wonder, the uncredited cartoon strip

"When you look at a photo or see a realistic face, you see it as the face of
another; but when you enter the world of cartoon, you see yourself"

is from Scott McCloud's excellent "The Invisible Art" [1].

Cannot recommend it strongly enough; it contains a rich and enlightening
analysis of cartoons, and through that of the way we human perceive and
communicate using graphics.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-
Scott-...](https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-
McCloud/dp/006097625X)

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cosmojg
For the lazy: the symbol (⌘) has apparently been used at Swedish campgrounds
and parks for decades. It's used to denote interesting features, both natural
and man-made. It was inspired by the way Swedish castles look from above (a
central building with a turret at each corner).

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runarberg
Apparently it started being used to denote a place of interest in Finland in
the 1950's. Funny enough I have always thought that sign was universal,
understood by all culture to mean you can park your car here and see something
interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square)

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oblio
There's just few things that are truly universal. One example from somewhat
nearby: nodding means "no" in Bulgarian.

~~~
rusk
I've also met some Indian guys who bob their head when they're in agreement
which is very similar to how I'd be used to people I know shaking their heads
in disagreement.

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firmgently
I see that as a kind of figure-of-8 movement... when my friend and I visited
India we decided that it was a cross between a nod and a shake ie. ambiguous
yes/no, non-committal

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M_Bakhtiari
My mother keeps calling the feature symbol "zolbia" for its resemblance to the
middle eastern pastry, so whenever I have to help her over the phone I have to
tell her to press zolbia-so-and-so instead of command-so-and-so.

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jimothyhalpert7
> Kare also developed the icons, such as the trash can for discarding files,
> that helped define graphical interfaces. She and Jobs hit it off because
> they shared an instinct for simplicity along with a desire to make the Mac
> whimsical. “He usually came in at the end of every day,” she said. “He’d
> always want to know what was new, and he’s always had good taste and a good
> sense for visual details.” Sometimes he came in on Sunday morning, so Kare
> made it a point to be there working. Every now and then, she would run into
> a problem. He rejected one of her renderings of a rabbit, an icon for
> speeding up the mouse-click rate, saying that the furry creature looked “too
> gay.”

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gdubs
We couldn’t afford a Mac when I was a kid, but Susan’s icons were one of the
primary things that made it stand out as “special”. From the trash can to the
fact that it booted up with a smiling Mac icon, instead of the typical stream
of bios logs on every other machine of the day.

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sizzzzlerz
I hope she got disgustingly rich from her time at Apple. Her designs were an
integral part of making the Mac what it was and is today.

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peter303
I wonder if graphical user interfaces will become less relevant as natural
language, both voice and text, become more capable via A.I. No need then to
learn icons.

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nomocrypto
That will happen as soon as natural language isn’t incredibly painful to use
with computers (or other humans, for that matter).

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majewsky
I think it's a pretty safe bet that computer experts (developers, admins,
etc.) will be both the first ones and last ones to use GUIs (just like for
TUIs).

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seshagiric
Thanks for introducing me to Milanote

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cup-of-tea
It's seen on Swedish road signs because it was copied from Swedish road signs.
Did anyone really think it might be the other way round?

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macattack728
I don't think anyone is confused that the origin is swedish road signs. to
quote from the article:

"I was just not sure what a ‘feature’ looked like … so I was thumbing through
a symbol dictionary and I came across this symbol (⌘). In the back of the
book, it said it was for an ‘interesting feature’ at Swedish campgrounds. I
thought it was maybe a little abstract, but it worked."

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cup-of-tea
The original title of this submission was something like "Why is the Apple
symbol seen on Swedish road signs?" It was clearly renamed and now my comment
makes no sense.

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jcahill
It was: What is the Apple ⌘ symbol doing on hundreds of road signs in Sweden?

