Wired ran an article on Susan Kare, who designed the typefaces and icons for the original Macintosh, and now creates the gift images on Facebook:

After two decades of front-end work for clients like Microsoft, Sony, and IBM, the Mother of the GUI now spends hours a day in her cozy San Francisco office sculpting virtual birthday cakes, bouquets, engagement rings, and other icons sold as gifts in Facebook’s rapidly growing social network.

Launched last February, the site’s gift shop offers icons for every occasion, from balloons, puppies, and champagne to mojitos, handcuffs, boom boxes, and a can labeled whoop ass. To date, users have exchanged more than 20 million virtual gifts, paying up to $1 for each, making them one of the site’s most successful revenue streams.

Kare went to high school round my parts, and the typefaces she created for the Mac originally borrowed the names of local train stops:

The first Macintosh font was designed to be a bold system font with no jagged diagonals, and was originally called “Elefont”. There were going to be lots of fonts, so we were looking for a set of attractive, related names. Andy Hertzfeld and I had met in high school in suburban Philadelphia, so we started naming the other fonts after stops on the Paoli Local commuter train: Overbrook, Merion, Ardmore, and Rosemont.

Also in my backyard, The Lovely Bones) began shooting in Malvern this week. Peter Jackson is apparently unhappy with the local trees; summerish temperatures delayed the leaves from changing color.

# 2007 Oct 24