Susan Kare also known as the “The Woman who gave the Macintosh a Smile” is an influential designer, best known for designing the distinctive icons and typefaces for the Apple Macintosh. Kare worked as the creative director at Apple from 1983 to 1986 responsible for design of the user interface of the Macintosh and was an artist for the team on the Apple Macintosh II where she used her skill to create simple and effective symbols that helped navigate the desktop and interact with this new machine. Kare became a pioneer in pixel art, she initially conceptualized her designs for the cut, paste and paintbrush icons on a Grid notebook before transferring her design over to the screen in a difficult 72 by 72 bits format, Kare would also frequently get unusual inspiration for her icons such as the command Icon which she based on a Swedish campground sign meaning “interesting feature”, and is best known for designing the Happy Mac Icon that greeted users when they loaded the operating system and updated versions of her original symbols for drawing applications such as the Lasso, the Grabber and the Paint Bucket are still prominently used in modern day Graphic design programs.

Kare also designed many ‘city’ fonts including the Geneva, New York, Monaco, Toronto and most notably the classic Chicago typeface which she has stated were “specifically designed for the screen” and were created as an “opportunity to break away from monospace fonts with no descenders and w’s that had to be 5 dots wide.”.

The Macintosh was released in January 1984, accompanied by a Superbowl ad inspired by George Orwell’s popular dystopian novel and Kare continued her career after leaving Apple and proceeded to work for Microsoft 3.0, helping to define its look, and with the arrival of color, she created the designs for Windows Solitaire described as ‘the most popular procrastination online tool before social media’. Later, in 2008 she migrated to Facebook and designed Virtual “Gifts” which people could purchase and send to friends. In 2015, Kare became head of Product Design at Pinterest and currently Kare works at Niantic Labs. Additionally, in 2015, her original sketches for the User Interface Icons were displayed in the “This is for Everyone” exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art.