Blog4: Post Modernism in Europe

Susan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who’s made various the interface elements for Apple in the

Kare was born in 1954 in Ithaca, New York, and studied Fine Arts at Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated in 1978. After College, Kare moved to San Francisco to work as a supervisor at the Museum of Fine Arts, where Kare saw her old friend Andy Hertzfeld, an emplyee at Apple, and offered her a job to work at Apple with him as a designer of screen graphics and digital sources. Although Kare wasn’t experienced with computers or digital design, she became revolutionary for her pixelated icon designs and user computer communication.

While Steve Jobs was looking for partners to help him with his new software Macintosh, Hertzfeld and Kare were busy working on designing simple, minimalistic icons and typographies for the software. To create these icons, Hertzfeld and Kare used gridded paper and practiced making the icons since there were no computer apps to design them digitally back then. The first Mac fonts were also developed, such as Chicago, the New York, and Geneva typefaces made by Kare.

In conclusion, Susan Kare was a detrimental figure for Apple back in the day, with her user friendly designs and becoming recognized as one of the first UI designers.