It’s Ada Lovelace Day, and time to carry out my pledge.
I’ve chosen to write about Susan Kare, an artist and designer whose name the younger generation are probably not very familiar with, but whose work on Facebook they probably are – she designed many of the icons for the Facebook Gifts application. More importantly (and the reason for which she is really known) is her work in the early ’80’s for Apple, where she created many interface elements for the ever popular Mac. I say that even though I’m a fake member of the Mac tribe, using a Mac at work but a HP at home. (Something about that is making me a bit schizo, I think!).
Anyway, back to the topic at hand – I didn’t start out intending to write about Susan, but this pledge gave me the opportunity to discover her and learn more about her work and life, which I subsequently started to think is very intriguing – hence my decision to write about her. Susan was one of the first few employees of NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs founded in 1985 after leaving Apple (aha – I bet some of you thought he was a lifelong Apple employee. NeXT was bought by Apple in 1997 though, which took him back to the fold).
Another thing that Susan designed that generations of computer users are probably familiar with is the Windows Solitaire game. I can’t tell you the number of hours I used to play that when I was younger.
Susan Kare is a very successful graphic designer today, and has her own design firm, Susan Kare User Interface Graphics. MoMA in New York carries some of her products. She is also a Creative Director at Chumby, where she is working on the Chumby device, a handheld embedded computer that runs software widgets.
Susan Kare, this post is for you.
Image credit R.J.Muna, Susan Kare Design via an LA Times article on kare.com
One Size Fits One 