Born 1954

Susan Kare is famous for designing Apple’s Macintosh interface elements, icons and typefaces in the 1980s, as well as a number of other pixel-based graphics for early computers. She was one of the key figures in the PC usability revolution initiated by Steve Jobs at Apple. Kare is often referred to as “the woman who gave the Macintosh a smile,” for designing the original Happy Mac icon.

 

 

 

Susan Kare at Apple, 1984.

In 1984, Macintosh computer was issued with bitmap graphics and a Command-key symbol designed by Kare. She had taken the sign (looped square, or Saint Hannes cross) from a book of Swedish historical symbols.

 

Command key symbol.

In 1990, Kare designed a card deck for Windows 3.0 Solitaire game. 25 years later, Areaware home accessories brand released an expanded card deck with two jokers, designed by Kare.

Solitaire Cards deck issued by areaware. © Areaware.

Having spent three decades working in the tech space, in 2018 Kare was honored with an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) medal. Previous winners include the likes of Paul Rand, and Charles and Ray Eames.

 

Icons designed by Susan Kare for Macintosh. © kareprints.com

Rebeca Méndez

Born 1962

Rebeca Méndez is a scholar, artist,and designer of Mexican origin, known for her works at the boundaries between academia, art, and design. Méndez’s art practice is in photography, film, video, and installation, exploring the nature of perception and representation. She once said “boundaries are like open invitations to me.” Today she is a professor at UCLA Design Media Arts Department and an internationally-renowned multimedia artist.

Rebeca Méndez. Photo by Michael D. Powers.

In 2006, Méndez was commissioned to create a public art installation on four cone-like structures at the campus of the University of Cincinnati. For several months, she photographed grass from various points of view and under different weather conditions. This allowed light and wind to create visual differences, revealing the patterns that a blade of grass produces through complex organization.

Grass, 2006. Public art at the University of Cincinnati Rec Center by Rebeca Méndez.

 

 

Méndez considers the experience of a journey an artistic process and many of her works are based on travels to unfamiliar or extreme places like Iceland, Patagonia and the Sahara Desert. She uses video and photography to examine the cycles and systems, the forces and cross-rhythmic tensions that make natural phenomena emerge.

CircumSolar, Migration 2, 2013. Public art at the Pico Rivera Public Library in Los Angeles by Rebeca Méndez.

 

 

Committed to a sustainable future, Méndez founded the UCLA CounterForce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio for art, design and environment.

Poster for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Lecture Series printed in a plastic trash bag, 1997. Design by Rebeca Méndez.

 

 

Grass public mural in University of Cincinnati

Born 1962

Gail Anderson is an American graphic designer based in New York. She worked for Rolling Stone from 1987 to 2002, achieving the position of senior art director. She also designed a number of book covers, Broadway music show posters and a postage stamp commemorating the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Anderson is the chair of Design and Advertising faculties at the School of Visual Arts in NY.

 

Gail Anderson. Photo by Declan Van Welie. Courtesy of Gail Anderson.

“Most of what I do is typography-driven, whether it’s through type-play or working with hierarchies in editorial content. More and more, I’m interested in creating editorial content as much as designing it—I’m all about communication through design,” Anderson said in an interview with Inside Design.

Rolling Stone magazine spread, 1997: Marilyn Manson. Art director: Fred Woodward. Designers: Fred Woodward, Gail Anderson. Photographer: Matt Mahurin.

 

For much of her career at Rolling Stone, working with art director Fred Woodward, Anderson fine-tuned her typographic expressionism, devising quirky letterforms out of traditional and non-traditional materials.

Some of Gail’s work for Rolling Stone. Illustration by Alex Ostroy.

In 2015, Princeton Architectural Press published Outside the Box, Anderson’s book dedicated to hand-drawn packaging. The book explores one of the biggest trends in the packaging design world today: visual authenticity.

A page spread of Outside the Box book.

 

 

 

Gail Anderson

Essay

Designing women

An enlightenment project exploring the impact of women in design. It also aims to raise awareness of an ongoing gender imbalance in the design industry.

 

Resources

Designing women

Rebeca Méndez

 

Poster for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Lecture Series printed in a plastic trash bag, 1997. Design by Rebeca Méndez.