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Susan Kare

 

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Susan Kare



 
 
Susan Kare (born 1954) is an artist and graphic designer
Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design....
 who created many of the interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 elements for the Apple Macintosh
Macintosh

File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc....
 in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT
NeXT

NeXT, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets....
 (the company formed by Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs is an United States businessman and co-founder, Chairman, and Chief executive officer of Apple Inc.. Jobs is the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios....
 after leaving Apple in 1985), working as the Creative Director.

was born in Ithaca
Ithaca, New York

The City of Ithaca sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York New York State, USA. It is best known for being home to Cornell University ? an Ivy League school with almost 20,000 students ....
, New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
 and is the sister of rocket scientist and filker
Filk music

Filk is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to Science fiction fandom. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s....
 Jordin Kare
Jordin Kare

Jordin Kare is physicist and aerospace engineer known for his research on laser propulsion. In particular, he was responsible for Mockingbird , a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine mission....
. She graduated from Harriton High School
Harriton High School

Harriton High School is a public secondary school located in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania....
 in 1971, received her B.A.
Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin language Artium Baccalaureus, is an Undergraduate education bachelor's degree awarded for either a course or a program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
, summa cum laude
Latin honors

Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the Grade with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, though some institutions also use the English translation of these phrases rather than the Latin originals....
, in Art from Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a highly selective Liberal arts colleges in the United States Women's colleges in the United States in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Massachusetts....
 in 1975 and her Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 from New York University
New York University

New York University is a private university, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan....
 in 1978.






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Encyclopedia


Susan Kare (born 1954) is an artist and graphic designer
Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design....
 who created many of the interface
Graphical user interface

A graphical user interface is a type of user interface which allows people to human-computer interaction such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment....
 elements for the Apple Macintosh
Macintosh

File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc....
 in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT
NeXT

NeXT, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets....
 (the company formed by Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs is an United States businessman and co-founder, Chairman, and Chief executive officer of Apple Inc.. Jobs is the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios....
 after leaving Apple in 1985), working as the Creative Director.

Background

Kare was born in Ithaca
Ithaca, New York

The City of Ithaca sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York New York State, USA. It is best known for being home to Cornell University ? an Ivy League school with almost 20,000 students ....
, New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
 and is the sister of rocket scientist and filker
Filk music

Filk is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to Science fiction fandom. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s....
 Jordin Kare
Jordin Kare

Jordin Kare is physicist and aerospace engineer known for his research on laser propulsion. In particular, he was responsible for Mockingbird , a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine mission....
. She graduated from Harriton High School
Harriton High School

Harriton High School is a public secondary school located in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania....
 in 1971, received her B.A.
Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin language Artium Baccalaureus, is an Undergraduate education bachelor's degree awarded for either a course or a program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
, summa cum laude
Latin honors

Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the Grade with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, though some institutions also use the English translation of these phrases rather than the Latin originals....
, in Art from Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a highly selective Liberal arts colleges in the United States Women's colleges in the United States in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Massachusetts....
 in 1975 and her Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 from New York University
New York University

New York University is a private university, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan....
 in 1978. She next moved to San Francisco and worked for an art museum.

Apple Computer Inc.

Kare joined Apple Computer, Inc. after receiving a call from her high school friend, Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeld

Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a key designer of the Macintosh system software....
, in the early 1980s. She was Creative Director for Apple from 1982 to 1985.

She is the designer of many typeface
Typeface

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs....
s, icons, and original marketing material for the original Macintosh
Macintosh

File:Imac alu.pngMacintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc....
 OS
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
. Indeed, 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. An early pioneer of pixel art
Pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art....
, her most recognizable works from her time with Apple are the Chicago
Chicago (typeface)

Chicago is a sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare for Apple Computer. It was used in the Mac OS graphical user interface between 1984 and 1997 and was an important part of Apple's brand identity....
 typeface (the most prominent user interface typeface seen in Classic Mac OS
Mac OS

Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems....
, as well as the typeface used in the first three generations of the Apple iPod
IPod

iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc. and launched on . The product line-up includes the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the video-capable iPod Nano, and the compact iPod Shuffle....
 interface), the Geneva
Geneva (typeface)

Geneva is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare for Apple Computer. It is one of the oldest fonts shipped with the Mac OS. The original version was a bitmap font, but later versions were converted to TrueType when that technology became available on the Macintosh platform....
 typeface, the Monaco
Monaco (typeface)

Monaco is a Monospaced_font sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare and Kris Holmes. The face shipped with Mac OS X and was already present with previous versions of the Mac operating system....
 typeface (co-creator), Clarus the Dogcow
Dogcow

The dogcow, also known as Clarus the Dogcow, is a bitmapped image first introduced by Apple Inc.. It is the shape of a dog with nose and spots that look like a Holstein , originally created in 1983 as part of the Cairo Typeface by Susan Kare as the glyph for 'z'....
, the Happy Mac
Happy Mac

A Happy Mac is the normal booting icon of an Apple Macintosh computer running older versions of the Mac OS operating system. It was designed by Susan Kare in the early 1980s....
 (the smiling computer that welcomed Mac users when starting their machines for 18 years, until Mac OS X 10.2 replaced it with a grey Apple logo), and the symbol on the Command key
Command key

The Command key, also historically known as the Apple key or open-Apple key, is a modifier key present on Apple Keyboards. An "extended" Macintosh keyboard?the most common type?has two command keys, one on each side of the space bar; some compact keyboards have one only on the left....
 on Apple keyboards.

After Apple

After leaving Apple, Kare joined NeXT
NeXT

NeXT, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets....
 as the Creative Director. She later became a successful independent graphic designer
Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design....
 working with clients such as Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
 and IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
. Her projects for Microsoft included the card deck for Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0

Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Microsoft Windows, and was released on 22 May 1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a powerful rival to Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga on the GUI front....
's solitaire
Klondike (solitaire)

Klondike is a solitaire card game. Many people refer to Klondike as "solitaire". It has been proposed that the version shipped with Microsoft Windows is the most popular video game of all time, Chris Sells, a Microsoft employee, was quoted as describing it as the "most used Windows application"....
 game, as well as numerous icons and design elements for Windows 3.0. Many of her icons, such as those for Notepad
Notepad

Notepad is a simple text editor included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985....
 and various Control Panels
Control Panel (Windows)

The Control Panel is a part of the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface which allows users to view and manipulate basic system settings and controls via List of Control Panel applets , such as adding hardware, adding and removing software, controlling user accounts, and changing accessibility options....
, remained essentially unchanged by Microsoft until Windows XP
Windows XP

Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptop, and media centers....
. For IBM she produced icons and design elements for OS/2; for Eazel
Eazel

Eazel was a software company based in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape Communications Corporation, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others....
 she contributed iconography to the Nautilus file manager
Nautilus (file manager)

Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the animal shell of a nautilus to represent an shell ....
.

The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues....
 store in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
 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
Facebook

Facebook is a free-access social network service website that is operated and privately held company by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people....
. 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
Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending greeting card, Valentine's Day flowers, or offering confectionery....
, the gift selection was modified to include new and limited edition gifts that did not necessarily pertain to Valentine's Day.

Kare is currently employed by Chumby Industries, working to create the Chumby
Chumby

The Chumby is an Ambient device consumer electronics product made by Chumby Industries, Inc.. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection....
 device.

External links

  • (#45)
  • - San Francisco Chronicle
    San Francisco Chronicle

    The San Francisco Chronicle is Northern California's largest newspaper, serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California, from the Sacramento, California area and Emerald Triangle south to San Luis Obispo County....