Jef Raskin on icons

In 1979, as an employee at Apple, Jef Raskin started the MacIntosh project (he was also responsible for changing the name of the computer from the Annie to the MacIntosh because he thought it was sexist to name computers after women).

 
Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin, image from Mac History.


Although I'm pretty sure he was wrong about the mouse, I love what he had to say about icons.

[Jef] Raskin...like the idea of a bitmapped display and windows, but he was not as charmed by all the cute graphics and icons, and he absolutely detested the idea of using a point-and-click mouse rather than the keyboard. "Some of the people on the project became enamored of the quest to do everything with the mouse," he later groused. "Another example is the absurd application of icons. An icon is a symbol equally incomprehensible in all human languages. There's a reason why humans invented phonetic languages." p111, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

From http://www.gentleface.com/free_icon_set.html

SymbolBlender

Why stop at Che? The guy on the subway was tickled to pose his carryall bag for me. If I were more energetic, I'd provide an image of the Marx Brothers all with the faces of Karl Marx (and the berets of Che).