Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:29:48 · Susan Kare
I had to take it off my computer so I didn't play too much and slate at the time thought that solitaire made a dent. And I'm just gonna show a few images that I made in the decades after Apple and before, some examples of good advice that I wanted to share with you. So I've worked for a lot of clients and we're not gonna talk about them all. And I feel so grateful. Again, things that were fun and some things that were serious and some things that wanted self consciously to seem like business. But I worked on a project for General Magic. I did the logo and we had a different kind of desktop metaphor that was a little more literal and hallways with doors. And I think the very worst thing we had was jars of text, because why? But the idea was that you could remember where things were by going and finding them in a logical way, and I kind of laugh, wince, like all these things are gone, like no Rolodexes, no phones that looked like that, but at the time, yeah, no file cabinets. I mean, there still are file cabinets, but at the time, you could tap on those drawers and they would come out and you could put whatever you wanted in there. And that was kind of a fun project that just didn't... We could send postcards, but it didn't quite anticipate email. I worked for Facebook on a project that you couldn't just upload images, but you could buy images for a dollar, like a real dollar and send them to people. So I thought this was a wonderful project of kind of having a gift shop and what could you draw that someone would want enough either to have or to share with someone that it was worth spending a dollar on. So we did this for not quite four years and had a new gift every day that launched at midnight on the East Coast. And we could kind of tell by maybe quarter after if it was gonna be a successful bestseller by just how many sold in that first fifteen minutes. And we had some limited editions and we had some, I thought maybe if you made something that cost thousands of dollars, like diamond earrings and a Rolex and did fancy things, that it would seem more worth a dollar because it was so expensive. But what I learned was that cute trumped everything.
00:33:17 · Susan Kare
Teddy bears, anything heart shaped, the kiss mark was the best seller of all time, And I would say if my life depended on selling a drawing for a dollar, I now know I would draw a penguin because we had multiple limited editions of penguins and they all sold out. But it was just interesting. We did some collabs with Britney Spears and other entertainers. And ultimately, Facebook ended this program because they didn't wanna compete with third parties, but it was good while it lasted. Then I did some icons for Pinterest where a terrific animator helped me with these. I thought just a little bit of motion so that it wouldn't get really irritating over time. And I made many icons there. This isn't all for Pinterest, but some of them were. I made a logo for a stealthmill.com, which terrific company, but before they had their real logo, we did a trash panda. And thought like because it dealt with trash in a similar way. And this is an illustration, The National, which is Amtrak's magazine, invites artists, I think it's a quarterly magazine, and they have artists interpret their route map, so I thought it might be fun to go back and do pixelated icons for places where you could take the train. And I love doing logos. This is for magic puzzle, which really does make these great jigsaw puzzles that then after you finish, they perform a magic trick, not levitating. But I was an artist doing studies for the logo, which is pretty close to this for a Pikmin Bloom game and Peridot, which is a game, and love doing avatars. Just kind of, avatars are so freeing because they can stand for anything, So it like kind of made me feel like gifts, you just wanna have an array that someone can find something that speaks to them. And I just did these badges for a fairly new Ledger crypto wallet, and it has a little attachment opening in the front so that you can personalize it, and they really wanted to have something a little bit retro looking. And this is a logo for a VC firm where the idea is get out of the office and work in the mountains, work somewhere outdoors was the idea of this. And Dave Moran, a friend called and said, on a Friday, I think, and wanted to have an image in t shirts and hats like by Monday. So kind of a quickie project, but it was fun to get to have a little bit of experience with something that was new.
00:37:02 · Susan Kare
And now, I wanted to share some advice that I've been given by people that I met. It's not a Google project and I'm always looking to add to it. So I welcome any good advice that you wanna send along by people that really influenced me. And this Paul Rand I mentioned earlier, just a terrific designer who started working, I think, for magazines when he was around 15, and he said that he was kind of like, all this stuff with all these new fonts, it's like you don't need that many, he was kind of brusque, you don't need that many fonts, you just have to know how to use them well. And this is some of his work. I got to work with him at a company called Next where Steve Jobs went after he had to leave Apple, and I of course wanted to hire Paul Rand for the logo because he was my hero, And Steve hadn't really heard of him, and he thought we should have a contest, like probably, which I would never think is the best way to get good creative, but he said we could hire five people or firms and pay them each 15 ks and then we would pick the best and continue to work with them. So I invited some people and then I invited Paul Rand and he said, You will pay me a $100,000. I will do one logo and you will like it. And that is actually what happened and we did like it and we did pay him and it was such a great learning experience for everybody to work with him. Among other advice he gave me, these are the fonts that he tended to use a lot, And I noticed in his work, he also tends to use the same colors. And I kinda thought, okay, if PMS three fifty four green is good enough for Paul Rand, it's good enough for me. And I still tend to look in his books and use some of the colors that he recommended for next. He did, just as an offhand remark, say that. But when we were talking about logos, he really advocated trying hard to think of a way to do something to the name of the product, kind of the way he put next in the cube. He showed this as what not to do. This is a couple AT and T logos ago because he said, If you can spend a ton of money to make some random symbol associated that doesn't really mean anything much, I mean, I guess it's the world, with your logo. You can do whatever you want, but most people don't have unlimited money.
00:40:39 · Susan Kare
So these are some logos that he did and you can kind of get the idea that Morningstar has a rising sun and IBM is pinstriped and businesslike, and I love that UPS logo. And he said when he was doing it, he showed it to his six year old daughter and said, Catherine, what is this? And reportedly, she said, It's a present, daddy. And he thought that that was such great justification that it was understandable, but really it had a shield and a package and sadly, they modernized it because I'm sure there were people sitting around a table who said, Well, we're not just about packages anymore, but I keep hoping they'll bring it back. And this is a futurist named Paul Saffo, and I just loved this quote that he mentioned one day, and I kind of get this in a metaphorical way. And I mean, I know I always think I can do this in an hour when really nothing takes an hour. And so many projects I've worked on, you optimistically think you know exactly what you want to do, but it's still allow extra time. This is my dad, who was the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, which studied taste and smell. And I introduced my dad to Paul Rand, and he made that logo for Manel, which I felt pretty happy about and they got along really well. But my dad, I think, always had good advice. It wasn't the most cheerful advice, but it was realistic. And he had to raise a lot of money for the Science Center, so he knew what he was talking about. And I try to remember that because I get depressed when I hear no. And he also said this, which I think is like a really realistic way to think about things and not be kidding yourself. This is Daniel Nord, who was born in Sweden, now lives in Portugal, and worked in London for the mayor. He's an architect, and he told me how they used to just sit around tables and have endless discussions about things. And this is how he said, Make it visual. I mean, I guess this is a metaphor too, but do the drawing, really show, don't tell, I think is what he meant. And this is a guy, maybe well known in some circles, Jean Pigozzi, who I met through Steve Jobs. He was kind of an Apple fan. He maybe invented the selfie, but had a lot of celebrity friends and his father, he was Italian and his father started the Simca car company, that, you know, he said, so that I could like spend my life doing whatever I wanted.
00:44:26 · Susan Kare
And he collects African art and he said, and this amused me, because it just... It does seem like a long time ago and a lot of fun that we worked on the Macintosh. And he also said this, which I think, like, I try to do. I think it's good advice. And this is Andy Hertzfeld on the left, Bill Atkinson, Bud Tribble, and Steve Jobs, and Alan Kay on the right who's in his 80s now, unbelievably accomplished computer scientist. And this is Bud quoting Alan Kay as a kind of tenet about user interface and maybe not having everything at the same level and nesting things so that things can just appear that ease of use seems possible. And I always try and think about that. And Alan Kay said this to me, and I thought that was, I took great joy hearing that because he just said, Yeah, it's like, who knew proportionally spaced funds can actually look pretty good. And this guy, pretty well known, he's sitting in my cubicle at Apple, and he did say in the 80s, like, appreciate what you have right now. And the first off-site I went to, he put up these three goals. And because of the second goal, a programmer named Steve Capps and I, Steve Capps sewed a black flag and I painted a skull and crossbones on it and put a striped apple as the eye patch. And we went to work in the middle of the night and climbed up on the roof because obviously security was a lot more lax back then. And we flew that flag and it was really just as a rejoinder to this, that we were the pirates. And this too, I remember we used to show the Mac to lots of people and I still think of this now because obviously you say, like some people can figure out how to use this, but not everybody. And then there was great joy because they could feel smart or they wouldn't feel dumb if you said it was easy and they still had trouble with it. This is the only piece of really bad advice I got from Steve Jobs. He said, If Apple... And I thought, Well, I'm not gonna buy my stock if he's not buying his, he would know. And he also said, Susan, you can twiddle bits and never make more than $20,000 or it's better to be a creative director. He was talking about Next, and I was a creative director, and I got to work with Paul Rand. That was fantastic, but ultimately, I was a bit twiddler at heart and I went back to it. And maybe not always bits, but...
00:48:09 · Susan Kare
And I think this is debatable, but he took lots of visiting executives to see this movie. And I liked it because it had Welder in it. Jay Chiat started the ad agency that Apple used, Chiat/Day. And this was kind of the, it was not work life balance at the time, and everybody I worked with in the software group had a sleeping bag in their cube. And I think this is really good to remember. I know a couple companies I've worked for, we kind of decided that 15 people, you could still have consensus hiring and everybody in a room and be on the same page and then you start to get more people and there's a plus and an upside and a downside. And Andy said this, he gave me this advice showing stuff to Steve. He's like, don't show him one thing because he'll say he doesn't like it because it maybe forces you to go try and do it again and be better. But if you show a few things, then he can be involved and say that something is terrible, but still pick something. And this is advice from my mom, and I think it's very good advice. This is Evan Sharp and Ben Silberman who started Pinterest, and they had a lot of good ideas, but Evan used to say this. This is Dennis Wang, who started working at Google when he was an undergrad at Stanford, and he's a terrific computer scientist and artist. And he told me this, that was the prevailing wisdom at Google, and I would probably preach the same thing, like don't mess around with the logo and put it in a different color and put it on a crazy background until people know it so well that you can play with it. But obviously they did, Dennis made these, they did pretty well with this. And this is something a friend's dad told me. This is not political. It's just a fun picture I found with an accordion. And you know this guy, he has a lot of truly good advice, including this. But I don't think it means be discouraged and quit trying. It just means, oh, maybe it's time to go on to the next idea. And thank you, but also really thank you to Y Combinator. I kinda had an amazing day today and everything ran so smoothly and everyone was so gracious, and it just seemed like I felt envious of everybody taking part in this event because it just seemed so cool. Thank you.