1984
1940
TODAY
Icons is a story from the User-Friendly Computing section of the STARTUP Gallery. Click on the map to explore any section of the gallery.
Icons
Like so much of the graphical user interface, the icon was developed at Xerox PARC and popularized by the Macintosh.
David. C. Smith came up with the idea for icons while working on his PhD under Alan Kay at Stanford. He took the name from the religious icon because, like it, computer icons were more than simply pictures. They contained properties of the files and programs they represented. Smith joined Xerox PARC in 1976 and adapted his icons to an office metaphor, with icons for papers, folders, and filing cabinets. Versions of these icons by designer Norm Cox became part of the desktop of the Xerox Star, a workstation computer released in 1981.
Eight years after the icon’s invention, the Mac introduced the concept to the rest of us. Its icons were only a quarter the size of the Star’s, and completely lacking color or even shades of gray, but they were so friendly and attractive that they quickly became...icons.
They were designed by Susan Kare, who the New York Times called the Betsy Ross of the personal computer. Her designs were notable for suggesting a lot with a few black dots. Finding the right metaphor was the first step, but just as important was finding a graceful way to represent it. She has said that it is less important to make an icon immediately recognizable than to make it memorable. Aside from the straightforward icons for files and folders, the Mac is remembered for such icons as the wristwatch, the paint bucket, the smiling Mac, and its nemesis the bomb with a lit fuse. Today icons are so much a part of our computers that no matter what we are doing they are almost always in front of us.
David. C. Smith came up with the idea for icons while working on his PhD under Alan Kay at Stanford. He took the name from the religious icon because, like it, computer icons were more than simply pictures. They contained properties of the files and programs they represented. Smith joined Xerox PARC in 1976 and adapted his icons to an office metaphor, with icons for papers, folders, and filing cabinets. Versions of these icons by designer Norm Cox became part of the desktop of the Xerox Star, a workstation computer released in 1981.
Eight years after the icon’s invention, the Mac introduced the concept to the rest of us. Its icons were only a quarter the size of the Star’s, and completely lacking color or even shades of gray, but they were so friendly and attractive that they quickly became...icons.
They were designed by Susan Kare, who the New York Times called the Betsy Ross of the personal computer. Her designs were notable for suggesting a lot with a few black dots. Finding the right metaphor was the first step, but just as important was finding a graceful way to represent it. She has said that it is less important to make an icon immediately recognizable than to make it memorable. Aside from the straightforward icons for files and folders, the Mac is remembered for such icons as the wristwatch, the paint bucket, the smiling Mac, and its nemesis the bomb with a lit fuse. Today icons are so much a part of our computers that no matter what we are doing they are almost always in front of us.
