"I'm a great admirer of images that convey clear meaning at a glance," says Susan Kare. As Apple's user interface graphic designer at the dawn of Macintosh, Kare set new standards of pixel mastery. Her bitmap wrist watch, travel-destination city fonts, lit bomb icon that signals a computer crash ("they told me it would almost never be seen") and smiling, welcoming Mac start-up screen helped re-envision the computer from machine to co-creator. For PC diehards her work may be seen in IBM's OS/2 Warp icons and Microsoft Windows 3.0 icons and screen elements. And, of course, there are the playing cards for its Solitaire game-the refuge of diehard workaholics. Kare's objective was simple: "I hoped to help counter the stereotypical image of computers as cold and intimidating."

Armed with a Ph.D. in fine arts from NYU in 1978, Kare curated briefly at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco before setting up shop there as a freelance graphic designer. A phone call from high-school friend Andy Hertzfeld (then an Apple programmer) in 1982 encouraged her to invest in the smallest grade graph paper she could find-to plot out bitmap icon ideas-and interview at the start-up, icon-driven Apple venture. A career shift and computer history were made simultaneously.

Today her talents have drawn clients like Autodesk, the Getty Technology Group, Intel, PeopleSoft, Sony Pictures, and Yahoo! Though palette and screen resolution have increased significantly over the years, Kare continues to bring her simple style to our handheld devices and desktops. "My work has continued to be motivated by respect for, and empathy with, users of software."