1954 Ithaca [USA]

She was the graphic designer who created many of the elements of the Apple Macintosh graphical interface in the 1980s.

Susan Kare graduated summa cum laude in Art from Mount Holyoke College and earned her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from New York University in 1978. After graduating, she moved to San Francisco, where she worked at the Museum of Fine Arts as a sculptor and curator.

Her career seemed destined for art and teaching, but in 1982, she was offered a life-changing job: drawing a few icons and lettering elements for the new Apple computer.
Having no experience in pixel art or typography, Kare drew on her background in fine art, mosaics, cross-stitch (her mother was a big fan), and pointillism.

With a notebook of graph paper and some markers, Susan Kare created a series of icons that survive to this day.

She is the designer of various typefaces, icons, and marketing materials for the Macintosh OS. In fact, some of her early work can still be seen in many computer graphics tools and accessories, especially icons such as the lasso, the grabbing hand, and the paint bucket.

She was a pioneer of pixel art. Her most recognized works for Apple include the Chicago typeface (the most prominent user interface font seen in the Classic environment of Mac OS, as well as the typeface used in the first three generations of Apple's iPod interface), Geneva typeface, Monaco typeface (co-creator), the Perrovaca Clarus, the Happy Mac (the smiling computer that greeted Mac users upon booting up their machines for 18 years, until Mac OS X 10.2 replaced it with a gray Apple logo), and the Command key symbol on Apple keyboards.

She was also an employee at NeXT (the company formed by Steve Jobs after his departure from Apple in 1985), where she worked as a creative director.

After her time as Creative Director, she realized she wanted to "get back to making bitmaps" and became a freelance designer with the most impressive client portfolio in the world: Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, Motorola, Intel, and more.

Her work for Microsoft includes the design of the Windows 3.0 solitaire, as well as various design elements and icons.

For IBM, she produced icons and design elements for OS/2.

For Eazel, she created the iconography for the Nautilus file manager.

Susan Kare's work continues to influence the way millions of people interact with technology.

Between 2006 and 2010, she produced hundreds of icons for Facebook, and in 2015, she was hired by Pinterest as Head of Product Design. She currently works for Niantic Labs.