Susan Kare, who lives in San Francisco, designed most of the distinctive icons, typefaces and other graphic elements that gave the original Macintosh Computer, its characteristic appearance. Her goal is to make them easy to remember.
‘I would say an icon is successful if you could tell someone what it is once and they don't forget it’
She graduated from New York University with a Ph.D. in Fine Art. Kare’s first assignment for Apple Mac was developing fonts for the Mac OS. This was just the start and has then gone on to designing icons for Windows operating systems, bitmapping the virtual deck in the Windows version of Solitaire, crafting logos for startups, products for New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and making prints of memorable icons like the Bomb, the Watch, the Paint Can etc.
From this research it has given me the ideas to possibly draw designs using squared paper, just as Susan Kare does, this would help me create designs using the 'pixel' ideas, either way it would definitely help me to get ideas and roughs that are in line and proportion. It would also make my initial drawings much quicker by simply blocking-in sections; this is something I have been struggling with recently as I take too long in the designing section.
I love her work, and especially appreciate it more now after seeing and using some of her original ideas, in my everyday life. I think she is very successful and highly thought of.
