Susan Kare: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Susan Kare drew the Macintosh's visual language on graph paper, translating the vocabulary of modernist pictograms, needlepoint samplers and mosaic tesserae into 32×32 grids of black and white. This mix traces the sources behind that translation — Swiss and Bauhaus sign systems, a Bay Area puzzle artist, the Xerox labs up the road — and follows the thread out to the emoji and icon sets that inherited her grammar.

The Kynda mix for Susan Kare

• Key Influence · IBM logo and corporate identity by Paul Rand (1956). Rand is the modernist benchmark for Kare's world: reduce a mark until nothing can be removed and it still reads instantly. Kare's Macintosh glyphs follow that logic under brutal constraint — a 32×32 bitmap grid.
• Influencia Obscura · Inversions: A Catalog of Calligraphic Cartwheels by Scott Kim (1981). Kim is the hidden Bay Area thread: a Stanford-trained puzzle and symmetry artist who worked in Apple's orbit and whose ambigrams treat letterforms as reversible geometric objects. His book came out of the same Silicon Valley circle of graphics researchers Kare entered when Andy Hertzfeld recruited her, and it shares her core instinct — that a symbol is a shape problem solved on a grid before it is ever a picture of something.
• Local Roots · Xerox Star 8010 interface icons by David Canfield Smith (1981). Twelve miles from Apple's Cupertino offices, Xerox PARC produced the desktop metaphor Smith formalized in the Star: documents, folders and a printer as on-screen objects you point at. Apple's Lisa and Macintosh teams famously absorbed PARC's demos, and Kare's job was to give that inherited metaphor a drawn personality — warmer, wittier and far more legible in one-bit black and white than the Star's austere outlined forms ever were.
• Beyond the Medium · A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1886). Pointillism is the pre-digital proof that an image can be assembled from discrete marks that the eye fuses into form — the exact perceptual bargain a bitmap makes. Kare, who trained as a fine artist and earned a doctorate in art history, came to icon design through pictorial thinking rather than engineering, sketching on gridded paper where each square became one dot. Seurat's canvas is the painterly ancestor of that sheet of graph paper.
• Peer · Oakland typeface by Zuzana Licko (1985). Working in Berkeley at the same moment, Licko designed coarse bitmap faces on the Macintosh itself, treating the screen's low resolution as a legitimate formal condition rather than a defect. Where Kare's screen fonts had to serve a system interface, Licko's served Emigre's editorial experiments — two parallel answers to the same 1984 question of what type looks like when drawn in whole pixels, by designers in the same region and generation.
• From the Canon · Chicago typeface by Susan Kare (1984). The original Macintosh system font, drawn as a bitmap for menus and dialogue boxes, with heavy strokes chosen to survive the Mac's coarse screen without blurring. It set the voice of the machine before any icon did, and lived on through the first iPods, making it the single most widely read thing Kare ever drew. Chicago explains her method better than any logo: solve legibility inside the grid, then let character emerge from the constraint.
• Key Collaborator · Revolution in the Valley by Andy Hertzfeld (2004). Hertzfeld, the Macintosh system software programmer, recruited Kare to the team and wrote the tools that let her bitmaps become the machine's face; his memoir of the project is the fullest first-hand account of how those icons and fonts were made, argued over and shipped. The book records the day-to-day collaboration between her graph-paper drawings and his code, and remains the primary source for the Macintosh design story.
• Legacy · NTT DoCoMo i-mode emoji set by Shigetaka Kurita (1999). Kurita drew 176 symbols on a 12×12 pixel grid for Japanese mobile phones, solving Kare's problem at an even more extreme resolution: convey weather, emotion and action in a handful of dots. The global emoji vocabulary that grew from it is the direct descendant of the idea Kare proved on the Macintosh — that tiny bitmap pictographs can become a shared, affectionate language rather than mere utility marks.

What influenced Susan Kare

• Paul Rand. The article identifies Rand as Kare’s design hero. (also via IBM logo and corporate identity) “She echoes the advice of Paul Rand , "Don't try to be original, just try to be good".” (Wikipedia)
• Symbol Sourcebook by Henry Dreyfuss. Kare used Symbol Sourcebook for design inspiration. “When stuck on a design, she resourced inspiration from the books Kanji Pictograms for its table of the real-world origins of Japanese characters, and Symbol Sourcebook , [ 50 ] especially its reference for hobo graffiti .” (Wikipedia)
• Harry Loucks. Loucks introduced Kare to typography and graphic design. “For several summers during high school she interned at the Franklin Institute for designer Harry Loucks, who introduced her to typography and graphic design” (Wikipedia)
• Pointillism. The article says Kare drew on her experience with pointillism. “she drew heavily upon her fine art experience in mosaics , needlepoint , and pointillism .” (Wikipedia)
• Kanji Pictograms. The book is explicitly described as a source of design inspiration for Kare. “When stuck on a design, she resourced inspiration from the books Kanji Pictograms for its table of the real-world origins of Japanese characters, and Symbol Sourcebook” (Wikipedia)
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter) — culture for Susan Kare (wikidata.org)
• A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1886). A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat) — culture for Susan Kare (wikidata.org)
• IBM logo and corporate identity by Paul Rand (1956). IBM logo and corporate identity (Paul Rand) — titan for Susan Kare “She introduced Jobs to her design hero Paul Rand and hired him to design NeXT's logo and brand identity, admiring his table-pounding exactitude and confidence.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Byzantine mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale by Anonymous Ravenna mosaicists (547). Byzantine mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale (Anonymous Ravenna mosaicists) — culture for Susan Kare
• Universal typeface by Herbert Bayer (1925). Universal typeface (Herbert Bayer) — ghost for Susan Kare
• Isotype picture statistics by Gerd Arntz (1930). Isotype picture statistics (Gerd Arntz) — titan for Susan Kare
• Inversions: A Catalog of Calligraphic Cartwheels by Scott Kim (1981). Inversions: A Catalog of Calligraphic Cartwheels (Scott Kim) — ghost for Susan Kare
• Munich 1972 Olympic pictogram system by Otl Aicher (1972). Munich 1972 Olympic pictogram system (Otl Aicher) — titan for Susan Kare

Peers and kindred spirits

• MacPaint by Apple Computer. Kare contributed to MacPaint’s user interface. “When choosing an icon for the fill function in MacPaint, I tried paint rollers and other concepts, but I guess the pouring paint can made the most sense to people.” (Making the Macintosh, Stanford University)
• Andy Hertzfeld by Andy Hertzfeld. Kare identifies Hertzfeld as the friend through whom she joined Apple’s Macintosh project. “I got to Apple through my high school friend Andy Hertzfeld, who I had known since I was 14.” (Making the Macintosh, Stanford University)
• Pinterest by Pinterest. The article identifies Kare’s creative-director role at Pinterest. “Since 2015, she has served as creative director at Pinterest. Once again, she has used her conceptual brilliance to develop a series of iconic images” (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Next. Kare was a NeXT employee and its creative director. “After leaving Apple in 1986, Kare became creative director for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs at the short-lived NeXT, Inc .” (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Microsoft by Microsoft. Kare designed a card deck for a Microsoft game. “Her projects for Microsoft include the card deck for Windows 3.0 's solitaire game, [ 30 ] [ 31 ] which taught early computer users to use a mouse to drag and drop objects on a screen.” (Wikipedia)
• Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee by United States Mint. Kare was recommended for appointment to the committee. “In 2003, she was recommended by Nancy Pelosi as one of four appointments to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for designing coins for the United States Mint .” (Wikipedia)
• Niantic by Niantic Labs. Kare became a design architect at Niantic Labs. “In February 2021, Kare became Design Architect at Niantic Labs . [ 46 ] As of 2022 [ update ] , she concurrently heads a digital design practice” (Wikipedia)
• General Magic by General Magic. Kare created a desktop cartoon for General Magic’s Magic Cap. “For IBM, she produced pinstriped isometric bitmap icons and design elements for OS/2 . [ 31 ] [ 11 ] For General Magic, she made Magic Cap 's "impish" cartoon of dad's office desktop.” (Wikipedia)
• Mode Media by Mode Media. Kare joined the advisory board of Glam Media, later Mode Media. “In 2003, she became a member of the advisory board of Glam Media, now called Mode Media .” (Wikipedia)
• IBM by IBM. Kare produced icons and OS/2 design elements for IBM. “For IBM, she produced pinstriped isometric bitmap icons and design elements for OS/2 . [ 31 ] [ 11 ] For General Magic, she made Magic Cap 's "impish" cartoon of dad's office desktop.” (Wikipedia)
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco by Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Kare worked as a sculptor and occasional curator at the institution. “After her Ph.D., she moved to San Francisco to work at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), [ 9 ] [ 15 ] as sculptor [ 16 ] and occasional curator.” (Wikipedia)
• Chumby Industries by Chumby Industries. Kare designed Chumby Industries’ identity and interface elements. “In 2007, she designed the identity, icons, and website for Chumby Industries, Inc. , [ 39 ] as well as the interface for its Internet-enabled alarm clock.” (Wikipedia)
• Facebook by Facebook. Kare designed icons for Facebook’s virtual gifts. “Between 2006 and 2010, [ 35 ] she produced hundreds of 64 × 64 pixels icons for the virtual gifts feature of Facebook .” (Wikipedia)
• Eazel by Eazel. Kare worked with former Macintosh colleagues at Eazel. “At Eazel , she rejoined many from the former Macintosh team and contributed iconography to the Nautilus file manager which the company permanently donated to the public for free use.” (Wikipedia)
• Apple Inc.. Kare worked on the first Apple Macintosh. (also via Chicago (typeface)) “Susan Kare ( / k ɛər / KAIR ; born February 5, 1954) is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer from 1983 to 1986.” (Wikipedia)
• Bill Atkinson. Kare used graphics tools made by Atkinson. (also via MacPaint) “She immediately embraced Bill Atkinson 's existing rudimentary graphics software tools and applications, to toggle pixels on and off and convert the resulting images to hexadecimal code for keyboard input.” (Wikipedia)
• Bob Baxley. Kare worked with Baxley at Pinterest. “Working with design manager Bob Baxley, the former design manager of the original Apple Online Store , she compared the diverse and design-driven corporate cultures of Pinterest and early 1980s Apple.” (Wikipedia)
• NeXT logo. NeXT logo (Paul Rand) — collaborator for Susan Kare “She introduced Jobs to her design hero Paul Rand and hired him to design NeXT's logo and brand identity, admiring his table-pounding exactitude and confidence.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Steve Jobs. Jobs approved Kare’s principal Macintosh desktop icons. “Jobs personally approved each of her main desktop icons. [ 9 ] Kare participated heavily in the prerelease marketing campaign for the Macintosh in 1983” (Wikipedia)
• New York University. Kare studied fine arts at New York University. “She received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in fine arts from New York University in 1978 with a doctoral dissertation on "the use of caricature in selected sculptures of Honoré Daumier and Claes Oldenburg ".” (Wikipedia)
• Susan Kare LLP. Kare was a founding partner of the firm. “She was a founding partner of Susan Kare LLP in 1989. [ 3 ] [ 16 ] [ 12 ] At Eazel , she rejoined many from the former Macintosh team” (Wikipedia)
• Steve Capps. Kare and Capps made a flag together for the Macintosh team. “She and Steve Capps sewed a Jolly Roger pirate flag with a rainbow colored Apple logo eyepatch, as the christening brand of the new Macintosh headquarters at Bandley 3” (Wikipedia)
• Mount Holyoke College. Kare studied art at Mount Holyoke College. “She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in art from Mount Holyoke College in 1975, with an undergraduate honors thesis on mathematics” (Wikipedia)
• Revolution in the Valley by Andy Hertzfeld (2004). Revolution in the Valley (Andy Hertzfeld) — collaborator for Susan Kare “=== Apple === In 1982, Kare was welding a life-sized razorback hog sculpture commissioned by an Arkansas museum when she received a phone call from high school friend Andy Hertzfeld.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Tom Suiter. Kare worked under Suiter in Apple Creative Services. “She became a Creative Director in Apple Creative Services working for the department director, Tom Suiter, "at a time when it seemed as if the main Mac development was over".” (Wikipedia)
• MacPaint by Bill Atkinson (1984). MacPaint (Bill Atkinson) — collaborator for Susan Kare “She immediately embraced Bill Atkinson's existing rudimentary graphics software tools and applications, to toggle pixels on and off and convert the resulting images to hexadecimal code for keyboard input.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Verdana by Matthew Carter (1996). Verdana (Matthew Carter) — peer for Susan Kare (wikidata.org)
• Emigre magazine by Rudy VanderLans (1984). Emigre magazine (Rudy VanderLans) — geography for Susan Kare
• Xerox Star 8010 interface icons by David Canfield Smith (1981). Xerox Star 8010 interface icons (David Canfield Smith) — geography for Susan Kare
• Oakland typeface by Zuzana Licko (1985). Oakland typeface (Zuzana Licko) — peer for Susan Kare
• Visible Language Workshop research by Muriel Cooper (1975). Visible Language Workshop research (Muriel Cooper) — peer for Susan Kare
• Whole Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand (1968). Whole Earth Catalog (Stewart Brand) — geography for Susan Kare

Who Susan Kare influenced

• NTT DoCoMo i-mode emoji set by Shigetaka Kurita (1999). NTT DoCoMo i-mode emoji set (Shigetaka Kurita) — legacy for Susan Kare “In 2025, MoMA's Paola Antonelli included over a dozen of Kare's icons (some displayed as original drawings on graph paper) alongside the work of Shigetaka Kurita and Milton Glazer in Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, an exhibition fea…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Material Design icon system by Google Design (2014). Material Design icon system (Google Design) — legacy for Susan Kare
• Zuzana Licko. Chicago (Macintosh system typeface) (Susan Kare) — titan for Zuzana Licko (via Chicago (Macintosh system typeface), Oakland typeface)