Susan Kare

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Susan Kare:

The designer of Apple’s iconic dingbats font recreates Cairo as a throw rug

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The designer of Apple’s iconic dingbats font recreates Cairo as a throw rug
Can you spot Clarus the DogCow?
Photo: Susan Kare/Areaware

If you’re an old school Apple fan, you may well remember the Cairo font. Cairo shipped with every version of macOS from 1984 through System 7.1. It was computer history’s first “dingbats” font in computer history, meaning a font in which letters are represented by seemingly unrelated graphics.

Now Susan Kare, the iconic Apple designer who created the fonts and icons for the original Mac, has resurrected Cairo as the basis for a new limited edition throw rug design. Searching for the perfect geeky rug design for your office? Look no further.

Mac icon designer Susan Kare honored with award

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Fast Company/Susan Kare
Some of Susan Kare's iconic designs.
Photo: Fast Company/Susan Kare

There’s no more famous name in computer icon design than Susan Kare, who remains best known for creating the famous icons for the original Macintosh.

Having spent three decades working in the tech space, Kare is now being honored with an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) medal, whose previous winners have included the likes of Paul Rand, and Charles and Ray Eames.

Face ID logo resurrects a classic Macintosh icon

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FaceID
The iPhone X's FaceID feature looks impressive.
Photo: Apple

For a company that insists it doesn’t like to look to the past, Apple’s new Face ID logo will certainly feel familiar to longtime Mac users.

Apple debuted the new logo during its iPhone X keynote yesterday to show off the phones facial scanning features. It features a simple smiling face that looks three dimensional, but it’s actually just a repurposed version of the classic Happy Mac icon originally created by Susan Kare for the original Macintosh.

Check out the similarities:

Yo ho ho! Apple flies pirate flag to celebrate its 40th birthday

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I assume engineers don't get an accompanying bottle of rum.
Photo: Tommy W Farley/Twitter

In case you didn’t know, Apple turns 40 today. To celebrate, the company is giving a wink to longtime fans with a cheeky nod to its past.

A pirate flag flying outside Apple’s campus at 1 Infinite Loop is a reference to the “Jolly Roger” pirate flag flown by the original Macintosh team when it was developing Apple’s (arguably) most iconic computer back in the heady days of the early ’80s.

Pinterest hires former Apple designer Susan Kare

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Early Apple designer Susan Kare.
Early Apple designer Susan Kare.
Photo: Photo: Ann Rhoney

As part of the original Macintosh team back in the 80s, Susan Kare created some of Apple’s earliest typefaces and icons, but now the famous designer is ready to bring her iconic skills to Pinterest, as the company’s newest design lead.

Susan Kare’s original Mac icon designs go on show in New York

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Fast Company/Susan Kare
Susan Kare helped define the personality of the Macintosh. Photo: Fast Company/Susan Kare
Photo: Fast Company/Susan Kare

As the artist responsible for the famous icons used for the original Macintosh, Susan Kare played an immensely important role in personal computer history. A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York pays homage to the queen of pixel art — while giving Mac fans a chance to see Kare’s original graph paper designs in the process.

Called “This is for Everyone: Design Experiments For The Common Good” (the name comes from a phrase from World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee), the exhibition also features other classic bits of computer iconography, including @ symbol, Google Maps Pin and the Creative Commons logo.

Why Steve Jobs replaced the Mac’s  key with ⌘

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Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 7.42.40 AM

Graphic designer Susan Kare is iconic — literally. The mastermind behind the friendly 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons used in the original Mac operating system, Kare’s work has reached more people than almost any other graphic designer on Earth.

Yet the way she stumbled into designing the icons for the Mac operating system was pretty much a lark, and in a recent presentation at the EG conference in California, Kare spoke a little bit about how she stumbled into the job.

It’s a fascinating talk, not just for the details she shares about early Mac operating system development, but also because Kare finally reveals why Apple switched from the Apple symbol to the Command key.

Designer Of Original Macintosh Icons Gives Thumbs Up To iOS 7

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iOS 7 is a bold, radical departure from Apple’s previous design aesthetic, and as such, there’s a lot of controversy right now as people struggle to figure out what they think of the new look. It’s only natural that we’re in such flux to come to terms with what we think about iOS 7: what could be more personal than the interface of the one gadget with which we have our most personal connection?

One person who has no such reservations about the design of iOS 7, though, is Susan Kare, the woman who designed many of the original Macintosh operating system’s timeless and most beloved icon.

Creator Of Original Macintosh System Icons Makes A New Sticker Pack For Path App

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Makes me hungry just looking at them.
Makes me hungry just looking at them.

Personal social networking app, Path, just released a new icon set into its sticker shop today, called “Iconic Bites.” While the stickers are adorable little bite-sized, pixel-chic representations of food and such, what really makes them cool is that they were created by none other than Susan Kare, the designer of the original Macintosh system icons.

The Path blog posted an interesting interview with her, as well, in which she talks about how her long experience in the design industry has influenced her current designs.

Everything You Need To Know About The Apple Vs. Samsung Trial [Day Five]

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applevssamsung

Keeping up with all the latest Apple vs Samsung happenings can be tough, and confusing. The trials is underway in San Jose California. Some days are filled with interesting witnesses taking the stand, while others are packed with lawyers hammering boring witnesses with silly questions.

To help you keep up on the Apple vs Samsung trial we’re compiling each day’s events into one short news story that consists of the best tweets from the reporters there on the scene. Here’s everything you need to about what happened in the Apple vs Samsung Trial on day five, August 7th.

Mac Icon Designer Susan Kare Will Testify In Apple Versus Samsung Trial

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Kare designed the famous
Kare designed the famous "Happy Mac" icon and many others we still use today.

Susan Kare, the graphic designer famous for creating a number of icons for the Macintosh, will be called as a witness in the ongoing trial between Apple and Samsung. Kare will reportedly talk about the similarities between the user interface graphics on the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices.

Apple, Ink: The Coolest, Wildest, Weirdest And Most Extreme Apple Tattoos Around [Gallery]

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Forever, the face of Apple.
Forever, the face of Apple.
Photo: Jaime De Leon Tud

It’s a slow Friday afternoon, and in browsing through our emails for tips, we stumbled across this incredibly detailed tattoo of Steve Jobs designed by Jaime De Leon Tud of Wildside Tattoo in the Phillippines.

It got us thinking: why not blow off work early and get some Apple-inspired ink? We hit the internet looking for inspiration, and after seeing dozens of images (oftentimes of tattoos still in the process of oozily healing), we remembered that getting ink involves needles and blood, and wimped out.

The whole exercise wasn’t fruitless, though, because in our travels, we came across a number of totally cool, or weird, or sexy, or bizarre, or clever, or just plain hardcore Apple tattoos from members of the Cult of Mac spread around the world. Here’s some of the best of the bunch.

Next Page: Even wilder tattoos

Check Out Susan Kare’s Original Graph Paper Designs For Classic Mac OS Icons [Gallery]

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Screen Shot 2011-11-23 at 1.30.14 PM

I’ve always had a little crush on Susan Kare, the graphical interface pioneer who designed most of the original Mac OS icons and also designed the first proportionally spaced digital font, but this incredible piece on her over at PLOS had me wooed all over again, especially when I saw her incredible original sketches of the Mac OS icons we all know and love, which Susan laboriously designed on graph paper.

Check out some of her work on icons both familiar and foreign below, it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day.