Few designers are afforded the chance to work on an epic scale, but human nature being what it is, many must surely dream of being able to make dramatic style statements, in the form of a huge public installation, say. Yet I wonder how many designers aspire to working within the confines of a canvas measuring just 30 by 30 pixels – about half the size of a postage stamp? Susan Kare is just such a rarity, a computer icon designer whose portfolio over 20 years could be shoehorned on to a single side of A3. Rarely in design can so little have gone so far.

Kare is the talent behind Apple’s famous graphical user interface (GUI) icons. The first Macs in the early 1980s had a bitmapped display in which each pixel on the screen was controlled by a single “bit” of computer data, meaning it was either on or off (black or white). With a canvas of just 900 pixels for each, Kare created the smiley Mac, ticking watch, trash can and bomb, to name just some – all icons in every sense of the word. Also, 19 of the 20 symbols in the Kare-designed MacPaint tool palette have survived 20 years to appear in some form in today’s Photoshop Tools.

Her secret? “I am obsessive about every pixel.” This is a skill that dates back centuries, Kare contends. “The tile mosaics of the Romans can be thought of as an early form of bit-mapped graphics, and similar techniques also appear in medieval weavings and tapestries.”

However, Roman citizens didn’t need to interface with mosaics, which is the raison d’être of Kare’s work. “You need to keep the user and the constraints of the medium in mind,” she explains. “It’s not about self-expression, but finding the lowest common denominator, so that the meaning is clear and the symbol communicates without the burden of extraneous detail. Take the silhouettes of two children that are used on school crossing signs. It’s not because of technological limitations that these children do not carry plaid lunchboxes, sport photorealistic hair-ribbons, or sing. None of that would aid in the instant recognition and interpretation of the meaning of that sign.”

Like many designers who go on to achieve great things, Kare fell into her speciality. A fine arts graduate, her first job was as assistant curator at the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, after which she turned freelance. One assignment came from an old school friend, Andy Hertzfeld, a software engineer at the nascent Apple Computer. Apple was developing its GUI for the Apple II, and needed a designer to work on icons.

“Originally, I started with graph paper,” Kare reveals. “Andy suggested I try some bitmap images this way, because he was in the process of writing an icon editor. I bought a pad with the smallest grid I could find, and just used a pencil and eraser.”

In 1982 Kare joined Apple as a full-time “Macintosh artist” to work on proportional fonts and more icons. “My job was originally to design a series of bitmap fonts – these ended up being Chicago, New York, Geneva, San Francisco, etc. I also ended up doing title bars, control panels, buttons, and desk accessories.”

Kare worked in the Mac Software Group, and “always solicited and got feedback from my colleagues”. She adds: “Informally, [Apple co-founder] Steve Jobs often turned up at the end of the day and discussed many aspects of the software, including the icons, and offered suggestions.”

Two decades on, and Kare is part of Apple legend, yet, she says, even back then Jobs made them feel they were part of ©     ß something special. “He used to say, ‘We’ll all look back on this project and it will have been a really great moment in time.’ He was right about that. I look back on it and think about what terrific colleagues and great work experiences I had.”

When Jobs left Apple to found NeXT, Kare followed him in 1986 as his creative director, and two years later joined Microsoft, to design the icons and buttons for Windows 3.0. She was also responsible for the look and feel of perhaps the developed world’s biggest workplace time-waster – Solitaire.

Although her work with Apple still informs much that’s in today’s Mac OS X GUI, Kare believes the nature of Mac icons has changed. “The current icons are more illustrative and detailed, whereas mine function more as symbols, like traffic signs.”

Kare is fiercely passionate about her highly-specialised art, and remains impressively hungry for fresh challenges. “It’s great to be able to work in full colour and explore animation, but also to contribute work to small devices,” she says. “My design firm continues to work on icons for large and small clients, on software that is designed for devices or for the web. I love phone and small-screen applications, because of the constraints. I enjoy the challenge of trying to be clear and expressive in extremely limited screen real estate. People struggle with complex functionality every day with their phones. I also recently developed a set of icons for a large software company that could weather CEO and corporate ID changes.”

One challenge, however, remains: “One thing I haven’t done yet is a car digital display system – I’d really like to get my hands on those icons!”

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