[Ada Lovelace Day] is a worldwide blogging event to celebrate the contributions women have made to technology.
Talking about women and technology on a blog devoted to cute things, it's only natural that my post be about computer interface graphic designer Susan Kare.
Remember MS-DOS, a black screen on which you had to input white lines of text to run programs? That was in the days before graphic computer interfaces. Then the Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS came along and changed all of that, making computers easier to use by replacing command lines with cute, clickable icons.
Those early examples of pixel art were designed by Susan Kare: the "Happy Mac" icon, the Chicago screen typeface, the command symbol, and many of the tool icons still seen in graphics programs such as Photoshop. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and New York University, Kare worked at Apple as a Creative Director from 1982 to 1985. She went on to do work for other computer companies such as NeXT, IBM and Microsoft (where she designed the graphics for Window 3.0's solitaire game). Currently she is helping to develop the Chumby computer, and has done some icon work for Facebook.
Apple's reputation for cute, nonthreatening computers owes a lot to her pioneering graphic work, and that's why she's my pick for Ada Lovelace Day.
[Susan Kare's Portfolio Site]
[Wiki entry]
[Interview with Susan Kare]
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