Susan Kare
Graphic designer and type designer, who created the original Macintosh icons and typefaces at Apple from 1982 and has since designed interface graphics for NeXT, Microsoft, Facebook and Pinterest.
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 19 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Design is about making things meaningful and memorable: get the idea right and the form follows from it.
always focus on making things meaningful and memorable. And I think the heart of that is have a good idea and then the form will follow.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
You can be creative within any set of constraints, so long as you understand what they are and get excited about them rather than resent them.
usually I think you can be creative in any constraints. You can make some pretty fun art with beach trash while you're walking around. And this you can be creative, but it's good to understand what the constraints are, and then be excited about that as opposed to being upset that you don't have a thousand colors.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
A computer meant for anyone has to be understandable without a manual, and it has to be friendly.
And we wanted it to be as understandable as possible, so you wouldn't necessarily need a manual, and that it should be friendly
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Show 16 more
A plain drawing of a pencil stands for writing better than a glossy realistic pen, because the more detail an image carries the more particular the thing it depicts.
which is why I think like a simple drawing of a pencil can stand for writing in some ways better than a chrome pen with a reflection, which is real very fancy, but it's a very particular kind of pen that not everybody might write with.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
An icon should carry one or two salient details and nothing else.
So, I my bias in icons is the a salient detail or two, but don't lard it with a lot of extra stuff.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Detail a symbol could technically carry still costs you, because it distracts from the instant recognition the symbol exists for.
there's not a technical reason that they couldn't have plaid lunchboxes and shoelaces or be singing a song, but it would probably be more distracting and just take away from that instant recognition that you're aiming for.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
The way to draw a person everybody can be is to crop one, so the image gives away no gender, no age and no hairstyle.
I tried to crop a person it's not a person with a little square head it's the idea is it's a crop so you don't know the gender or the age or the hair do or really anything about this glimpse of a person.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Drawing the printer as it really looked shortened the icon's life; stopping sooner and drawing something simpler would have made it last.
But again, too much detail. It would have had a much longer lifespan if I had just stopped and made it simpler.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
An icon should never picture a particular product, because the product dates and takes the icon down with it; use a metaphor instead.
So, in general, I think it's not good in icons to show pictures of a particular product design because like the 3 and 1/2 in floppy for save. Um even though some there's still a few of those kicking around, but obviously it it didn't age well. Better to use a metaphor.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
An abstract symbol is harder to remember than one whose metaphor reinforces the concept it stands for.
it was abstract and sometimes abstract things can be harder to remember and then something that has a metaphor that reinforces the concept.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
An interface should say what it means with animation and sound rather than text, because then one version works internationally.
but we tried not to have any any text so that it could be international without having to make a different version.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
An application icon and its document icon should read as a verb and a noun: the tool looks active, and the document resembles the tool.
and I like the idea that since it was a process it looked kind of active and um and then it could be paired with a document that resembled it so our system was kind of a verb and a noun
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Icon work is not really about the grid of pixels; it is about the metaphor, the idea and the meaning behind everything on the grid.
But um I think the whole point of that project and the graphics was it isn't really just about a grid of pixels. It's the metaphor and the idea and the meaning behind everything.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Icon design is not an exact science, and the placeholder a programmer threw together is one of the best sources of ideas.
The The point just being this is so not an exact science. And I always like to show either what a client asks for or what a programmer might have used as a placeholder because I've gotten so many good ideas that way.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Even a poor sixteen-colour palette earns its keep, because colour is what lets someone tell things apart at a glance.
And color, even if 16 colors, and some of them weren't very good colors, but it was still so nice to have to be able to use red for alerts and to differentiate at a glance a little easier when you had color as another option.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
When people pay a real dollar for a picture, cute beats expensive: teddy bears and hearts outsell diamond earrings and a Rolex.
But what I learned was that cute trumped everything. It just um teddy bears, anything heart-shaped, the kiss mark was the best seller of all time.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
A contest between five paid firms is not the way to get good creative work.
he thought we should have a contest. Like probably which I would never think is the best way to get good creative
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
However exactly you think you know what a project needs, allow extra time — nothing takes an hour.
I mean, I know I always think, "I can do this in an hour." When really, nothing takes an hour. And um so many projects I've worked on you optimistically think you know exactly what you want to do, but it's still allow extra time.
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
Do not recolour a logo or restage it until people know it so well that playing with it reads as play.
and I would probably preach the same thing like don't mess around with the logo and put it in a different color and put it on a crazy background until people know it so well that you can play with it
Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Said 14 Aug 2026
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