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Susan Kare: Mother of Icons You Love (or Hate)
bughunter writes "One of today's Yahoo Daily Picks is the personal exhibit of Susan Kare: the mimimalist creator of most of the original Macintosh icons then, later, the iconic elements for Windows 3.0, and she didn't stop there. More than just icons, her GUI elements have become part of the modern collective subconscious - trashcans, bombs, and Happy Macs are universally recognized by computer literate persons the world over. (I can personally attest that the Mac System 6 beachball is burned into my soul...) She deserves some recognition of her own."
See subject.
I gotta say that cute icons make a difference. I hate the crappy ones that most software use. Designing an icon that is distinctive and has an obvious functional message at 20 * 20 pixels (or whatever) takes a certain kind of talent.
I remember the happy mac startup icon from 1984... when the Mac was happy, *I* was happy. When the Mac had a twisted mouth and Xs for eyes, I wasn't.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I'd never really thought of icon creators as artists before, but I suppose they deserve recognition with the more familiar artists.
Just think: together with the "NBC Peacock" guy and a handful of other logo creators, Susan Kare's "art" has probably been viewed and used my more people, for more hours, than any conventional artistic works in human history... and all in the space of two short decades.
Good. So instead of just /.ing her, we do it on a day when the site's address has just been emailed out to thousands of link-starved people too.
Script Kiddies wish they had that much power.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Oh well, I guess owning a Mac makes you some sort of IT hero around slashdot. You know what a Happy Mac is but don't know what 'hashing with buckets' means or what a b-tree does or what a two handed clock algorithm for freeing memory is all about.
Well around here I don't know of ANY IT guys that know any of that. Here IT guys usually refers to the systems support guys (you know, the ones that maintain the network, sets up computers, gives you flack for installing non standard software, etc). The stuff you mention usually is the domain of the developers (or engineers if you prefer).
BTW, the Happy Mac was the icon you saw when your Mac passed all it's boot checks and was booting "normally" (vs the Sad Mac which you saw if your machine was hosed).
And you bitch about Mac elitism? Listen to yourself dude.
/. think back to the old macs they owned or used in school.
"I've never used a mac except for a few times in passing, blah blah, it's only for the computer illiterate, blah blah, I obviously know everything about computers because I know a couple coding techniques so I'm right and you're wrong, blah blah blah"
I'm sorry that you didn't feel included when the editor said that computer literate people know the Happy Mac icon, but damn, lay off the hostility...there's no need to call for jihad. If you don't like macs and never have, good for you, that's your choice. If you can reminesce about your Commodore PET, then let the other 95% of the people on
As far as arrogance derived from coding or system administration skill goes, it is unfounded. You're not cool and you're not making a difference. Any reasonably intelligent person can perform these tasks given the time and desire. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.
Now hopefully we'll both be modded down as trolls and we can go on with our lives.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Coming from someone decrying elitism, that is about the most elitist post I could think of.
The point of icons is not so much that you can instantly know the function of an unfamiliar icon by looking at the picture. It's more that you can recognise that icon again easily once you know what it does. I can more quickly find an icon I know in a sea of other icons, than I can find a text button in a sea of other text buttons. You also need much less screen real estate in a small icon (such as a toolbar button) than an equivalent text button.
Even though you are trying to look as if you know something about UI and usablility, you obviously don't know anything.
Score -1, misleading.
You don't get out enough.
Maybe you should get some better-educated IT guys. Knowledge of the way computers and software work can help one make intelligent decisions about how to set them up, help one diagnose problems, and help one write custom software to get a job done.
How does knowledge of how a btree works help someone figure out a driver issue? There is a huge difference in having a basic understanding of how software environments work vs specific algorithms (which is the the OP referred to). What would an IT person be coding to require them to know about the complexities of freeing/allocating memory. Hell, the current thinking is that we don't want PROGRAMMERS (Java, C#, HLL, scripting, etc) to have to deal with such issues, let alone the guy who unpacks the Dell and installs Office a dozen times a day.
Good admins are programmers/engineers, too. That makes them more expensive, but they can be much more efficient and flexible that way.
I disagree. Anyone who knows any more than very basic programming will probably be a programmer. You get paid more and you put up with a lot less sh*t, assuming of course you can find a job right now, in which case they would settle for an IT job to pay the bills. The only time I see programmers act as IT guys is in small shops that can't afford full time IT folk (or if their IT folk are like many of the IT folk I've met and sometimes take, umm, a while shall we say to get what seems like the most basic things done, like add more ram to your system). And I would never let an IT guy near any code (other than os scripting).
Art doesn't have to be pretensious or overly complex.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I used to design icons (still do sometimes) so feel free to regard my reply as a little bit biased.
O OOTOOOOOOO
A poorly made set of icons can indeed be worse than text. I think the really crucial element is whether different icons or wordcons are easily distinguishable. Your brain can easily pick out unique features. for example:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
notice how that T is much easier to spot that that Q? Icons that all look similar will be more difficult to pick out than words. However, to some extent, text looks like text looks like text, and a set of icons that have been designed to be easily distinguishable from each other will be easier for most people to pick out than a bunch of wordcons. Yes, there is a learning curve where you have to figure out what the icons mean, but I typically learn that pretty fast, and then I process icons faster than text. I would say that once they are learned, you're stripping away a "level of indirection". After all, kids who haven't learned to read yet can process pictures... you learn how to do that very early.
As an aside, people read lowercase, serifed fonts faster than uppercase sans-serif fonts because uppercase sans-serif fonts have fewer distinguishing features for each letter. Your speed of reading, or your speed of picking out icons, doesn't happen on a conscious level. Even if you're annoyed by icons, they might be helping you anyway.
Your point about the trashcan icon is kind of interesting, and true. The point of an icon is that it evokes a general concept. A trashcan icon that is too detailed can make you think of a particular trash can, or a particular type of trashcan -- a simple one should just make you think of the platonic form of trashcan. It should work sort of like the word "trashcan", except that you can read it faster, and tell it apart from other icons more easily. (That's why the simplicity of Kare's icons is so awesome.) So yes, it would work much better if it's appearance were consistent across OS's.
The idea of trying to pick a tool in photoshop using printed names -- "paintbrush, history brush, pencil" -- instead of icons makes me shudder.
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