design legends you should know #1 Susan Kare

In school they teach you about influential people, founding fathers, famous artist, etc. But in college, we haven’t discussed important graphic designers. So I’ve taken it upon myself to educate myself and ya’ll while I’m at it.

Today’s design star is Susan Kare

So who is Susan Kare, the “woman who gave the Macintosh a smile”?

Susan Kare is most known for her work at Apple. She got her start there in 1983 as a Macintosh Artist. Despite not knowing anything about computer graphics and typefaces, she educated herself at the local library and aced the interview.

At Apple, Kare was in charge of designing icons and typefaces for the Mac operating system. She worked with graph paper to design some of Apple’s most iconic icons such as the ticking bomb for system error, trash can, the pointed arrow cursor and more.

Because her icon designs were universal and friendly, they encouraged technology-illiterate users to try out computers.

She also designed fonts, contributed to the Mac rollout campaign, and demonstrated the capabilities of the MacPaint application.

Kare went on to create her own design firm, Susan Kare LLP, in 1989. Her design skills were used at companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, and even Pinterest.

source

Have you heard of Susan Kare? Are there any graphic designers I should look into next? Let me know 🙂