--- title: Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac description: Susan Kare, the designer behind the original Macintosh's icons and fonts, recounts how she went from art history and welding to becoming Apple's first Mac... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac | daily.dev og:description: Susan Kare, the designer behind the original Macintosh's icons and fonts, recounts how she went from art history and welding to becoming Apple's first Mac... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/HhZAJxPBL.png og:image:alt: Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 51 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Susan Kare, the designer behind the original Macintosh's icons and fonts, recounts how she went from art history and welding to becoming Apple's first Mac artist through a friendship with Andy Hertzfeld. She describes designing the Chicago font, the Happy Mac, the bomb icon, the command key symbol (borrowed from a Swedish sign), and applying constraints like 16x16 black-and-white bitmaps to create memorable, universal symbols. She shares anecdotes about Steve Jobs, Paul Rand, Bill Atkinson, and later projects for Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest, and NeXT, closing with career and design advice collected from mentors over decades. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Old icons](https://daily.dev/posts/old-icons-jwoucxne4) · Hacker News · 4 upvotes · 1 comments - [Chris’ Corner: Sweet Typography](https://daily.dev/posts/chris-corner-sweet-typography-k0vadat1b) · CodePen · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Héliographe: "If you put the Apple icons in …"](https://daily.dev/posts/h-liographe-if-you-put-the-apple-icons-in--fjcptpw5j) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#apple](https://daily.dev/tags/apple), [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T22:36:55.990Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T22:37:17.197Z","description":"Susan Kare, the designer behind the original Macintosh's icons and fonts, recounts how she went from art history and welding to becoming Apple's first Mac...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YEvLKzsEwMw/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YEvLKzsEwMw/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/susan-kare-designing-icons-graphics-for-the-original-mac-hhzajxpbl","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"apple,ui-design","timeRequired":"PT51M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac","description":"Susan Kare, the designer behind the original Macintosh's icons and fonts, recounts how she went from art history and welding to becoming Apple's first Mac...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YEvLKzsEwMw/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-08-19T22:36:55.990Z","duration":"PT51M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/HhZAJxPBL","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/YEvLKzsEwMw"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac"}]} ```