Susan Kare on Designing the Original Apple Mac Icons: Stories Behind Happy Mac, Command Key, and More
Y Combinator · youtube · 2026-08-15
At Y Combinator's Startup School, Susan Kare shared her experience designing the original Macintosh icons, typefaces, and symbols. As an art history PhD who joined Apple, she created the Happy Mac, Command key symbol, Chicago font, and more. She discussed design lessons from Steve Jobs and Paul Rand: make things meaningful and memorable, embrace constraints, iterate constantly, and use just enough detail to make an idea instantly clear.
Related event: Apple Icon Designer Susan Kare Shares Her Story(2 posts)→
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