Some things have become so ubiquitous that we never stop to wonder what came before them. Take the neat row of icons stacked at the bottom of your Mac screen. Before 1984, these little icons simply ...

Susan Kare, “Sketches for Graphic User Interface Icon” (detail) (1982), ink on graph paper, on view in ‘This Is for Everyone’ at MoMA (gift of the designer, 2015, photo by the author for Hyperallergic ...

The desktop of just about every Windows PC I’ve ever used has ended up being a mess. It gets cluttered with files I’d meant to save temporarily, but which are usually still there for months or years, ...

You can change nearly any desktop icon on both Mac and PC. To change desktop icons on a Mac, open the "Get Info" menu and paste in the picture you want to use. On a PC you'll need to make a .ICO file, ...

When you install Windows 7 and Windows 8 you will find that your desktop has only the Recycle Bin icon and any other icons enabled by your computer manufacturer. If you wish to add other icons such as ...

Susan Kare designed pictorial symbols that enabled non-technical users to operate a computer, a great contrast to previous screens with “command line” interfaces that required knowing code. Photo of ...