Occupation Graphic designer Siblings Jordin Kare Role Graphic designer | Name Susan Kare Website www.kare.com | |
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Born February 5, 1954 (age 70) ( 1954-02-05 ) Similar People Jordin Kare, Al Gore, William Henry Draper III, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs | ||
Susan kare a typographer
Susan Kare (born February 5, 1954) is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after leaving Apple in 1985, working as the Creative Director.
Contents
- Susan kare a typographer
- Susan Kare 2018 AIGA Medalist
- Background
- Apple Computer Inc
- After Apple
- Kareprintscom
- References
Susan Kare | 2018 AIGA Medalist
Background
Kare was born in Ithaca, New York, and is the sister of aerospace engineer Jordin Kare. She graduated from Harriton High School in 1971, received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Art from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her Ph.D. from New York University in 1978. She next moved to San Francisco and worked for the Fine Arts Museums. She is married and has 3 children.
Apple Computer Inc.
Kare joined Apple Computer after receiving a call from high school friend Andy Hertzfeld in the early 1980s. A member of the original Apple Macintosh design team, she worked at Apple Computer starting in 1982 (Badge #3978). Kare was originally hired into the Macintosh software group to design user interface graphics and fonts; her business cards read "HI Macintosh Artist". Later, she was a Creative Director in Apple Creative Services working for the Director of that organization, Tom Suiter.
She is the designer of many typefaces, icons, and original marketing material for the original Macintosh operating system. Descendants of her groundbreaking work can still be seen in many computer graphics tools and accessories, especially icons such as the Lasso, the Grabber, and the Paint Bucket. These designs created the first visual language for Apple's new point-and-click computing. An early pioneer of pixel art, her most recognizable works from her time with Apple are the Chicago typeface (the most prominent user interface typeface seen in Classic Mac OS, as well as the typeface used in the first four generations of the Apple iPod interface), the Geneva typeface, the original monospace Monaco typeface, Clarus the Dogcow, the Happy Mac (the smiling computer that welcomed Mac users when starting their machines), and the symbol on the Command key on Apple keyboards.
After Apple
After leaving Apple, Kare joined NeXT as a designer, working with clients such as Microsoft and IBM. Her projects for Microsoft included the card deck for Windows 3.0's solitaire game, as well as numerous icons and design elements for Windows 3.0. Many of her icons, such as those for Notepad and various Control Panels, remained essentially unchanged by Microsoft until Windows XP. For IBM she produced icons and design elements for OS/2; for Eazel she contributed iconography to the Nautilus file manager.
In 2003 she was one of the founding team of Glam Media (now Mode Media).
The Museum of Modern Art store in New York City has begun carrying stationery and notebooks featuring her designs. Beginning February 7, 2007, she has produced icons for the "Gifts" feature of the popular social-networking website Facebook. Initially, profits from gift sales were donated to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, for the fight against breast cancer. After Valentine's Day, the gift selection was modified to include new and limited edition gifts that did not necessarily pertain to Valentine's Day. One of the gift icons, titled "Big Kiss" is also featured in some versions of Mac OS X as a user account picture.
In August 2012, she was called as an expert witness by Apple in the company's patent infringement trial against industry competitor Samsung.
Kareprints.com
As of 2010, Kare heads a digital design practice in San Francisco and sells signed prints at Kareprints.com. Here she designs limited edition fine art prints available for purchase.