Ive is Mac idol, but the GUI was care of Kare

In all the adulation for Jonny Ive, spare a thought for Susan Kare. She’s the graphic designer behind the Macintosh iconography – the Graphical User Interface – that really personalised the computer revolution back in 1984.

Much of her work within Apple has been superseded, but her influence still pervades. Kare devised Windows 3.0 for Microsoft and went on to produce icons for IBM, Palm, Motorola and Sony. At 48, she ain’t retired yet.

According to a timely profile by Nick Compton in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, the programmer who first hired Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, says her designs worked ‘because of her sense of whimsy and good eye’. We can’t argue with that.