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The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

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Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#21

Post by petard »

pvg wrote: post #18
petard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the anecdotes from John Carmack about working with Jobs really interesting in this regard. Apart from being probably very smart Jobs did care a lot about the things they were building, and willing to throw everything overboard if you could convince him that an existing approach was not the right thing to do. It is something many managers or leaders lack IMHO, not willing to do the "right thing" because of pol…

I didn't get that impression from the Carmack stories at all. If you haven't had a chance before, dig into the early Mac development history at folkore.org. A number of the stories involve the team engaged in some (in hindsight) hilarious and ridiculous effort to humor, misdirect or otherwise manage Jobs in situations that arose primarily from him being profoundly, stubbornly, catastrophically wrong. The eventual res…

Interesting, will read up on these. There's ten years difference between early Apple and late Apple Jobs so maybe things were different for Carmack. In the end, Jobs must have been doing something right given his track record.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#22

Post by pvg »

petard wrote: post #21
pvg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get that impression from the Carmack stories at all. If you haven't had a chance before, dig into the early Mac development history at folkore.org. A number of the stories involve the team engaged in some (in hindsight) hilarious and ridiculous effort to humor, misdirect or otherwise manage Jobs in situations that arose primarily from him being profoundly, stubbornly, catastrophically wrong. The eventual res…

Interesting, will read up on these. There's ten years difference between early Apple and late Apple Jobs so maybe things were different for Carmack. In the end, Jobs must have been doing something right given his track record.

No doubt! It seems surprisingly difficult tease out exactly what it was, even if you trawl through all the anecdotes, histories and biographies. Perhaps it's simply that his proverbial reality distortion field held for long enough for his collaborators make the unreality reality.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#23

Post by oblio »

runarberg wrote: post #16
cosmojg wrote: post #7

For the lazy: the symbol (⌘) has apparently been used at Swedish campgrounds and parks for decades. It's used to denote interesting features, both natural and man-made. It was inspired by the way Swedish castles look from above (a central building with a turret at each corner).

Apparently it started being used to denote a place of interest in Finland in the 1950's. Funny enough I have always thought that sign was universal, understood by all culture to mean you can park your car here and see something interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square

There's just few things that are truly universal. One example from somewhat nearby: nodding means "no" in Bulgarian.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#24

Post by mseebach »

pvg wrote: post #22
petard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, will read up on these. There's ten years difference between early Apple and late Apple Jobs so maybe things were different for Carmack. In the end, Jobs must have been doing something right given his track record.

No doubt! It seems surprisingly difficult tease out exactly what it was, even if you trawl through all the anecdotes, histories and biographies. Perhaps it's simply that his proverbial reality distortion field held for long enough for his collaborators make the unreality reality.

There's also potential reality distortion in the other direction: how much of the early-apple lore has survived untainted by three decades of mythology, never mind the general haze of time (I know I'm telling a story from 2013 that's certainly not gotten more boring over time -- thing were crazy, but I'd not trust my self to be able to gave a 100% accurate account of exactly how crazy)? How much of it is an accurate recollection of what things were like day-to-day, and how much of it is a particularly crazy couple of week before the shareholder meeting that got amplified?

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#25

Post by pvg »

mseebach wrote: post #24
pvg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt! It seems surprisingly difficult tease out exactly what it was, even if you trawl through all the anecdotes, histories and biographies. Perhaps it's simply that his proverbial reality distortion field held for long enough for his collaborators make the unreality reality.

There's also potential reality distortion in the other direction: how much of the early-apple lore has survived untainted by three decades of mythology, never mind the general haze of time (I know I'm telling a story from 2013 that's certainly not gotten more boring over time -- thing were crazy, but I'd not trust my self to be able to gave a 100% accurate account of exactly how crazy)? How much of it is an accurate…

That's a very sensible concern but I think if you've worked in the field in the SFBA for a reasonable amount of time in the last 20 or more odd years, you've almost certainly heard variants of same stories and themes, sometimes from first hand participants.

Even when you allow for the indisputable fact that, say, Herzfeld or Cringley or Isaacson and others are fallible human beings with imperfect recollection and intrinsic biases, the lockstep consistency of the narratives and characterizations is striking.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#26

Post by ggg9990 »

pvg wrote: post #22
petard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, will read up on these. There's ten years difference between early Apple and late Apple Jobs so maybe things were different for Carmack. In the end, Jobs must have been doing something right given his track record.

No doubt! It seems surprisingly difficult tease out exactly what it was, even if you trawl through all the anecdotes, histories and biographies. Perhaps it's simply that his proverbial reality distortion field held for long enough for his collaborators make the unreality reality.

Yes, he’s a terrible person to try to learn from since his methods of success were so singular. I can imagine running the “Jeff Bezos playbook” but not the Steve Jobs playbook.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#27

Post by cup-of-tea »

macattack728 wrote: post #4
cup-of-tea wrote: post #3

It's seen on Swedish road signs because it was copied from Swedish road signs. Did anyone really think it might be the other way round?

I don't think anyone is confused that the origin is swedish road signs. to quote from the article: "I was just not sure what a ‘feature’ looked like … so I was thumbing through a symbol dictionary and I came across this symbol (⌘). In the back of the book, it said it was for an ‘interesting feature’ at Swedish campgrounds. I thought it was maybe a little abstract, but it worked."

The original title of this submission was something like "Why is the Apple symbol seen on Swedish road signs?" It was clearly renamed and now my comment makes no sense.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#28

Post by brisance »

pvg wrote: post #18
petard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the anecdotes from John Carmack about working with Jobs really interesting in this regard. Apart from being probably very smart Jobs did care a lot about the things they were building, and willing to throw everything overboard if you could convince him that an existing approach was not the right thing to do. It is something many managers or leaders lack IMHO, not willing to do the "right thing" because of pol…

I didn't get that impression from the Carmack stories at all. If you haven't had a chance before, dig into the early Mac development history at folkore.org. A number of the stories involve the team engaged in some (in hindsight) hilarious and ridiculous effort to humor, misdirect or otherwise manage Jobs in situations that arose primarily from him being profoundly, stubbornly, catastrophically wrong. The eventual res…

>The eventual resolution never involves Jobs saying 'ok, ok, you lot were right, let's do it your way'.

That would be un-becoming of a narcissist and a leader. What he would do, is to do a 180 and claim that it was his idea all along. From a dispassionate point of view this is actually good since all sides of a contentious issue can be fully explored, but it sure feels shitty when someone steals your idea and claims it as his own.

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#29

Post by majewsky »

nomocrypto wrote: post #11
peter303 wrote: post #8

I wonder if graphical user interfaces will become less relevant as natural language, both voice and text, become more capable via A.I. No need then to learn icons.

That will happen as soon as natural language isn’t incredibly painful to use with computers (or other humans, for that matter).

I think it's a pretty safe bet that computer experts (developers, admins, etc.) will be both the first ones and last ones to use GUIs (just like for TUIs).

Re: The Story Behind Susan Kare’s Iconic Design Work for Apple

#30

Post by madeofpalk »

runarberg wrote: post #16
cosmojg wrote: post #7

For the lazy: the symbol (⌘) has apparently been used at Swedish campgrounds and parks for decades. It's used to denote interesting features, both natural and man-made. It was inspired by the way Swedish castles look from above (a central building with a turret at each corner).

Apparently it started being used to denote a place of interest in Finland in the 1950's. Funny enough I have always thought that sign was universal, understood by all culture to mean you can park your car here and see something interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looped_square

I saw it in Iceland last year when driving around. Must be a Nordic/Scandinavian thing
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