Summary

  • Susan Kare’s early Macintosh icon work crossed paper sketches, pixel-editing tools, generated hexadecimal data and interactive use; no one representation records the whole design process.
  • The later MoMA–SFMOMA account of her archive shows a related preservation problem: a picture of an icon cannot substitute for the media, software and interpretation needed to study born-digital work.

A sketchbook is evidence, not the interface

The Museum of Modern Art catalogs a 1982 Macintosh icon sketchbook by Susan Kare. Its graph-paper squares stood for pixels. That object makes an unfamiliar stage of interface design tangible: a designer could draw a small image on paper before seeing it on the computer. But the page is not the running icon, and it does not show what happened when a pointer moved, a cursor clicked, or the computer interpreted the image.

Kare described that transition in a 2000 Stanford interview. When she joined the Macintosh work, she said, the available icon editor was rudimentary. She began on paper and then used a grid that let her switch pixels on and off. At first, someone showed her how to convert the art into hexadecimal values that could be entered on the keyboard. Andy Hertzfeld later made an improved editor that generated the hex beneath the icons. Those are distinct steps: a drawn proposal, a bitmap edited on screen, and a machine-readable representation produced for the software team.

The distinction matters because each step could introduce a different question. Did the image look balanced on graph paper? Did its black-and-white pixels remain legible at actual size? Could a user distinguish it from another symbol? Did its encoded form fit the application’s technical needs? Kare’s interview is retrospective testimony, not a complete engineering log, so it cannot answer every question about every icon. It does, however, show that the familiar picture was the visible end of a process involving tools and colleagues.

An icon had to work at the point of use

The screen image was only one part of the job. Kare recalled that the Mac team usually brought her a concept and she returned with several possible designs. People tried them, responded, and the final choice evolved. For the MacPaint fill tool, she explored alternatives before a pouring paint can made the most sense to the people she asked. She described the feedback as informal user testing—not a controlled study or proof that every user would interpret the symbol identically.

Some graphics also had physical interaction constraints. A cursor’s “hot” pixel—the point at which the computer registered a click—had to be easy to aim. A design that looked clear when enlarged could behave differently at normal scale or when a user tried to hit a small target. Kare recalled trying variations to see what functioned well. That is a practical reminder that an icon is not merely a miniature illustration: its meaning can depend on where the software places it and what action follows a click.

The history also resists the lone-genius version of interface design. Kare said the Lisa already had a trash can; she refined it for the Mac, whose pixel geometry differed. She worked with programmers who proposed functions and sometimes supplied the first idea for a graphic. Andy Hertzfeld built a better icon editor. Bill Atkinson and Hertzfeld later described Kare as a serious artist-user of MacPaint whose use helped refine the application; Atkinson called her a co-designer. These accounts preserve Kare’s contribution without transferring the work of implementation, prior interfaces or the wider Macintosh group to one person.

The archive adds another layer

Decades later, the problem changed from making the image to keeping its record interpretable. In a published account of a 2015 acquisition investigation, MoMA media conservator Ben Fino-Radin, SFMOMA media conservator Martina Haidvogl and Mark Hellar described Kare’s archive as it came to the institutions: hand-drawn graphics, a sketchbook and more than 300 floppy disks containing born-digital artifacts. They described the work of accessing those disks, examining the files, emulating them and reviewing them across curatorial and conservation roles.

That account is careful about the difficulty. The disks contained files in varying states of obsolescence and obscurity. A digital object could be viewed in different ways depending on the software used to interpret it, so conservators asked how to provide curators with a stable and consistent viewing environment. The public abstract does not establish that every disk was recovered, that every file was authored by Kare alone, or that one emulator reproduces the original Macintosh experience perfectly. Those limits are part of the story, not gaps to fill with guesswork.

SFMOMA’s separate collection record adds another material form: Graphic Icons, dated about 1989, is cataloged as a dot-matrix print and jointly owned with MoMA. It is not the 1982 sketchbook or proof of what was on any particular floppy disk. It does, however, make the later movement of icon imagery into print and museum collections visible. Each change of medium can expose some features while hiding others, especially the behaviour of an image on screen.

The museums’ work also complicates a simple choice between “keep the original” and “make a copy.” The sketchbook is a physical object. A floppy disk is a carrier that may contain multiple digital objects. A disk image can preserve a sequence of bits, but bits alone do not explain which software interpreted them or how an interface appeared to a user. Emulation can make old files viewable, but a modern display and input device may alter scale, timing or interaction. A printed page can be legible while saying nothing about how its icon behaved inside a live application.

What should remain visible

For a reader, a familiar Mac symbol can seem self-explanatory. For a historian or conservator, its record is stronger when several things remain distinguishable: the physical sketch, the digital file, the software or tool that renders it, the version or provenance of the file, and the decisions made when it is shown again. The available sources do not confirm that every one of these records exists for every Kare design. They do show why a museum cannot treat a screenshot as a complete substitute for the born-digital material.

Kare’s own account joins this preservation question to the craft of design. The grid enabled a visual idea to enter the machine; the improved editor made the conversion to hex easier; MacPaint gave her an enlarged view and a view at actual size; informal feedback helped compare options; cursor behaviour exposed a constraint that a static sketch could not capture. Later, the co-acquisition work had to make old digital materials accessible enough for curators to inspect without erasing the distinction between an artifact and its modern presentation.

That is the file behind the icon: not one hidden master image, but a chain of objects and interpretations. Each link can preserve something different, and each has a limit. The paper page records a design thought. The encoded file records a machine-readable form. The software gives that form behaviour. The archive and its viewing environment shape what a later audience can inspect. If those layers are collapsed into one polished image, the design may remain recognizable while its history becomes harder to verify.

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