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Today is the World Graphic Design Day, which aims to recognize the role of communication design all over the world. 

And what is Graphic Design?  It is a creative process that conveys messages and concepts through images and texts that are often used simultaneously depending on the objective. This work in practice materializes in various areas, such as corporate identity (branding, logos), editorial design (books, magazines, newspapers), packaging design, signage and web design.

Now that I think I've clarified what graphic design is, and what it's for, I'll start with my purpose for coming to write today. And no! I'm not going to tell you about Gutenberg.

I'm here to talk about someone who brought together new technologies with this exciting profession, I'm talking about Susan Kare. A woman who revolutionized graphic design in computers. 

In 1983 she was called to work at Apple thanks to a school friend who was already at the company then headed by Steve Jobs. 

Susan Kare became a member of the Macintosh design team, where she was responsible for the creation of the graphical interface and fonts of that operating system, such as the "Chicago" which became characteristic in Apple's systems and devices, used from the classic Mac OS to the third generation iPod. 

She created and developed a wide range of icons, such as the "bin", the system crash "bomb", the "happy" computer and the command symbol (⌘) or "Apple key" (Ctrl on PCs), which in this case Steve Jobs decided that the command key could not be the repeated apple found all over the interface: "There are too many Apples on the screen! It's ridiculous! We're taking the Apple logo in vain! We've got to stop doing that!". 

 

Susan Kare starts a search in an international dictionary of symbols and discovers (⌘), which in Swedish military symbology is equivalent to "point of interest", and so to this day is used on all Apple keyboards.

Susan Kare's inspiring work, and her ability to unite bold aesthetics with immediate perception of function, is a perfect example of the ideal fusion of art and science.

In closing I leave you with a video of a 2019 presentation by Susan Kare, where she talks about her career path and numerous stories that are sure to go down in Graphic Design history.