How Susan Kare’s Icon and Font Designs Shaped the Apple Macintosh UI

Interview with Apple

In 1982, Susan Kare, then a sculptor living in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a call from former classmate Andy Hertzfeld, Apple’s chief software architect, asking if she would design new icons and fonts for the Macintosh. Despite no prior computer graphics experience, she studied typography books at the Palo Alto public library and brought them to her interview, ultimately securing the position in January 1983 as a Macintosh Artist.

Icon Design

Kare’s first task was to create icons for the Macintosh operating system and applications like MacPaint. Working with a bitmap display where each pixel is individually controlled, she approached icon creation like mosaic art, using her background in hand‑craft techniques. Following Hertzfeld’s suggestion, she bought the smallest grid paper available and sketched concepts on a 2.5‑dollar graph notebook, defining a 32 × 32 pixel canvas for each icon. These sketches, now in MoMA’s collection, were later digitized with an Apple‑developed icon editor that exported hexadecimal code, marking an early form of computer visual art.

Fonts and Digital Art

Kare also designed a proportional font for the Macintosh, addressing the jagged appearance of monospaced fonts common in the 1980s. She created a bold weight called “Elefont,” later renamed “Chicago,” which became the system font for the Macintosh and later the iPod for over two decades. Additional fonts were named after Philadelphia‑area train stations and, at Steve Jobs’s suggestion, after world‑class cities such as New York, Geneva, London, Toronto, and Venice. Kare experimented with avant‑garde typefaces like “Ransom” (later San Francisco) and “Cairo,” which incorporated miniature pictograms.

Conclusion

Susan Kare’s legacy extends beyond awards; she infused artistry into a field dominated by engineers, creating intuitive, friendly visual symbols like the “Happy Mac” smiley and the bomb error icon that eased users’ fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about computers. Her work continues to influence millions of everyday computer users.

References

Alexandra Lange, “The Woman Who Brought Smiles to the Apple Macintosh,” The New Yorker, 19 April 2018.

Andy Hertzfeld, *Revolution in the Valley: How the Apple Macintosh Was Made*, pp. 16‑20, 2015.

John Brownlee, *Fast Company*, 2015.

Alex Soojung‑Kim Pang, “Interview with Susan Kare.”

Zuckerman, “The Designer Who Created the Macintosh Smile.”

Steve Silberman, “Susan Kare’s Sketchbook: The Artist Who Gave Computers an Expression,” PLOS Blog, 22 Nov 2011.

Edwards, “Legend: Susan Kare.”

Steven Levy, “The Birth of Mac,” *Rolling Stone*, 1 Mar 1984.

Wikipedia entry on proportional fonts.

Steve Silberman, *Icons: Selected Works 1983‑2011*, 2011.

“Computer Chronicles,” Season 1, Episode 18, 29 Mar 1984.

Andy Hertzfeld, *Revolution in the Valley*, p. 165, 2015.

John Brownlee, “Essential Knowledge for Young Designers.”