Drawing an icon is not easy. The shape must be simple, the message, unequivocal and the aspect, pleasant. An icon must be able to be understood by everyone, even people without experience. And it must be able to keep its clarity through time, cultures and technological developments. It was Susan Kare who took up this challenge at Macintosh. It is to her, in her capacity as an artist of the Macintosh human interface, that we owe in particular the pair of scissors for the cutting command and the index pointed for the paste control. These icons, which appear to us today as obvious, are the fruit of a long work of reflection. The icon project for the action to copy, for example, was originally a photocopier. Users would have been invited to file a file to duplicate it. But the idea was abandoned: a scale photocopier of 32 × 32 pixels did not give much. Steve Jobs himself was responsible for approving the designs of the icons. Failed with calligraphy and concerned about the beautiful even in the printed circuits, Jobs did not hesitate to put his employees at work if he was not perfectly satisfied with the result. The first Macintosh icons created a real digital grammar. They are a language that allows us, even today, to communicate beyond languages.
⇒ Presentation of the series
⇒ Lascaux rock paintings (1/11)
⇒ The man of Vitruve de Léonardo da Vinci (2/11)
⇒ Ptolemy solar system (3/11)
⇒ The pinsons of Charles Darwin (4/11)
⇒ The World City of Paul Otlet (5/11)
⇒ The Venus de Galileo phases (6/11)
=> To the book by Geradus Mercator (7/11)
=> The little black dress by Coco Chanel (8/11)
=> The Thom Edison bulb (9/11)
