HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL. Learning from Susan Kare 1 HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 2 Becoming aworldfamousgraphicdesignerinthemale-dominatedtech 3 HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 4 CONVINCING WITH A PINK MARKER Sometimes, all you need is the right different icons on a checkered note- opportunity. For Susan Kare, it was an book with a pink highlighter, imitating old high school friend who worked at the pixels of the computer screen. At Apple in the eighties. They were loo- the day of the interview, she arrived king for someone to design icons for with a lot of books and her sketches their newest Macintosh model, wich to give the impression that she knew was supposed to be much more user- what she was talking about when she friendly by eliminating the until-then really had no actual experience wor- standard of using code to navigate king as a graphic designer. The pink and control tasks. Having worked as sketches payed out: just five minutes a curator after finishing her art degree, into the interview, she was hired. She she gladly took the opportunity to be- went on to design some of the most come an artistic creator herself. One iconic digital icons, some of which are of the requirements of her new job still commonly used today. Her pink meant creating a new font, and alt- sketches were later bought by the Mu- hough she had never designed a font seum of Modern Art in New York as a herself, she was ready to take on the part of the beginnings of pixel art. challenge. Before the job interview, she went to the library and got hold of every book about graphic design they had. She also did sketches of CONVINCING WITH A PINK MARKER CONVINCING WITH A PINK MARKER 5 CONVINCING WITH CREATIVITY HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 6 CONVINCING WITH CREATIVITY Susan Kare designed the suite of „We always icons that made the Macintosh revo- lutionarya computer that you could try to have a communicate with. Every fifteen minutes or so, as I wro- te this story, I moved my cursor nor- range of thward to click on the disk in the Mi- crosoft Word toolbar that indicates solutions and “Save.” This is a superstitious move, as my computer automatically saves see what my work every ten minutes. But I lear- ned to use a computer in the era be- looks right.“ fore AutoSave, in the dark ages when remembering to save to a disk often stood between you and term-paper disaster. The persistence of that disk icon into the age of flash drives and cloud storage is a sign of its power. A disk means “Save.” Susan Kare de- signed a version of that disk, as part of the suite of icons that made the Macintosh revolutionary—a computer that you could communicate with in her high-school friend Andy Hertz- meaning “interesting feature,” pulled pictures. feld asked her to create graphics for from a book of historical symbols. Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of a new computer that he was working Kare looked to cross-stitch, to mosa- architecture and design at the Mu- on in California. Kare brought a Grid ics, to hobo signs for inspiration when seum of Modern Art, was the first to notebook to her job interview at Apple she got stuck. “Some icons, like the physically show Kare’s original icon Computer. piece of paper, are no problem; but ot- sketches, in the 2015 exhibit “This is On its pages, she had sketched, in hers defy the visual, like ‘Undo.’ ” for Everyone.” “If the Mac turned out pink marker, a series of icons to repre- At one point, there was to be an icon to be such a revolutionary object–– sent the commands that Hertzfeld’s of a copy machine for making a copy a pet instead of a home appliance, a software would execute. Each square of a file, and users would drag and spark for the imagination instead of represented a pixel. A pointing finger drop a file onto it to copy it, but it was a mere work tool––it is thanks to Su- meant “Paste.” A paintbrush symbo- difficult to render a copier at that sca- san’s fonts and icons, which gave it lized “MacPaint.” Scissors said “Cut.” le. Kare also tried a cat in a mirror, for voice, personality, style, and even a Kare told me about this origin mo- copycat. Neither made the cut. She sense of humor. Cherry bomb, anyo- ment: “As soon as I started work, Andy also designed a number of the original ne?” she joked, referring to the icon Hertzfeld wrote an icon editor and font Mac fonts, including Geneva, Chica- which greeted crashes in the original editor so I could design images and go, and the picture-heavy Cairo, using operating system. letterforms using the Mac, not paper,” only a nine-by-seven grid. After working for Apple, Kare designed she said. “But I loved the puzzle-like Her notebooks are part of the perma- icons for Microsoft, Facebook, and, nature of working in sixteen-by-six- nent collections of the New York and now, Pinterest, where she is a creative teen and thirty-two-by-thirty-twopixel San Francisco modern-art museums, director. The mainstream presence of icon grids, and the marriage of craft and one was included in the recent Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, emoji, and metaphor.”What Kare lacked in London Design Museum exhibit “Ca- and gifs is a sign that the visual revolu- computer experience she made up for lifornia: Designing Freedom.” Justin tionaries have won: online, we all com- in visual knowledge. “Bitmap graphics McGuirk, the co-curator of that exhi- municate visually, piecing together are like mosaics and needlepoint and bition, said, “The Xerox Star initiated sentences from tiny-icon languages. other pseudo-digital art forms, all of the metaphor of the ‘desktop’ as an Kare, who is sixty-four, will be hono- which I had practiced before going icon-based method of interacting with red for her work on April 20th, by her to Apple,” she told an interviewer, in computers, but it was the Apple Mac fellow designers, with the prestigi- 2000. The command icon, still right that popularized it.” ous AIGA medal. In 1982, she was a there to the left of your space bar, was sculptor and sometime curator when based on a Swedish campground sign CONVINCING WITH CREATIVITY 7 HOW TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL 8 CONVINCING WITH BOLDNESS While the Macintosh once made you She was bemused last year when her the Future, Kare brings the history of „A lot of wait with a tiny watch designed by son and colleagues at Pinterest aler- American graphic design full circle. It Kare, Pinterest offers you a spinning ted her that a 1984 portrait of her by was she who brought the legendary women are button when you refresh, also desig- Norman Seeff, taken for Rolling Sto- Paul Rand (the AIGA Medal winner in ned by Kare. Last fall, the small home- ne, had turned up on Reddit in the 1966 and a designer of I.B.M.) to the design brand Areaware débuted Ka- subreddit of “old school cool.” In the attention of Steve Jobs when the latter very good re-designed placemats, coasters, and photo, Kare lounges horizontally in her founded NeXT, in 1985, and needed a napkins with bitmap raindrops, waves, ergonomic chair, wearing jeans and a logo as iconic as the Apple. digital de- and diagonals; I bought them for the gray sweatshirt, with one gray-and- I asked Kare if there were other AIGA whole family for Christmas.“It’s fun to burgundy New Balance shoe propped medalists, besides Rand, whom she signers. And read that, before there was social me- on her desk. “Just a regular 1984 work saw as infl uences, and she lists a se- dia, countless people spent hours with outfi t—nothing special—but seems ries of pre-digital greats whose work have been Microsoft Windows Solitaire using the ‘pre-normcore’ in retrospect,” she is known for broad appeal, infectious cards I designed,” she said. said. “I lived in New Balance and Ree- warmth, and a sometimes cartoony In 2008, Kare created virtual “gifts” bok ankle-high workout shoes. Col- hand: Charles and Ray Eames (1977), for a very for Facebook that you could buy and leagues brought me toy robot souve- Milton Glaser (1972), and the New send to a friend, with new offerings nirs from work trips to Japan, and I see Yorker contributor and cartoonist Saul long time.“ daily, based on a sixty-four-by-sixty- postcards of favorite images from the Steinberg (1963). Through their work, four-pixel grid.The best-sellers played Metropolitan Museum.” The toys, the and now hers, one can see a legacy to the crowd: hearts, penguins, and art, and the sneakers embody the rigor of personal touch that one hopes will kisses, like a digital box of chocolates. and the humor that Kare has always continue into our digital future on a A sixty-four-pixel palette would seem brought to the task of making icons, deeper level than fi ngerprint readers. like a big step up, but Kare doesn’t which resonate across the decades. She gave the Mac a smile—where’s think detail necessarily makes better A redditor helpfully identifi ed the ro- the smile now?In the early 1980s, icons. “Simple images can be more bots—Monster from Macross (1983), Apple asked a young artist named inclusive,” she said. MR-11 Bulldozer Robo/Dozer (1982), Susan Kare to design some graphics Look at traffi c signs: “There’s a rea- and, on Twitter, Daniel Mallory Ort- for its forthcoming personal computer, son the silhouettes of kids in a school berg made a proposal: „building a the Macintosh.