Susan Kare

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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but we tried not to have any any text so that it could be international without having to make a different version.

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it was abstract and sometimes abstract things can be harder to remember and then something that has a metaphor that reinforces the concept.

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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.

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But again, too much detail. It would have had a much longer lifespan if I had just stopped and made it simpler.

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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.

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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.

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So, I my bias in icons is the a salient detail or two, but don't lard it with a lot of extra stuff.

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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.

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And we wanted it to be as understandable as possible, so you wouldn't necessarily need a manual, and that it should be friendly

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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.

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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.