Esc Keys by Susan Kare

 

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Video created for Pirouette: Turning Points in Design at MoMA (Jan-Oct 2025). Credits: Susan Kare; Milo Vanegas

Heart Icon by Susan Kare - Keyboard key in silver

the keys

Esc Keys includes a selection of 32 new icons, available as enamelled images on sterling silver or gold vermeil computer keys, handcrafted by the Asprey Studio Workshop. Designed to be mounted on a mechanical keyboard, they are both a nod to computing history and a celebration of precious materials in contemporary art and design.

Heart necklace pendant in gold colour

the jewellery

The new Esc Keys icons are also available as necklace pendants in sterling silver or gold vermeil. Each piece is meticulously handcrafted by the Asprey Studio Workshop, ensuring exceptional quality and attention to detail. Designed by Susan Kare, these pendants transform her new digital icons into wearable art - bridging the worlds of technology, design, and craftsmanship.

“Susan is an influential and pioneering artist who works with reduced palettes and resolutions to convey, in an immediately understandable way, complex and often inexpressible tasks.” - Alastair Walker, Chief Creative Officer, Asprey Studio

Susan Kare

Susan Kare (b. 1954) is a pioneering and influential computer iconographer, renowned for the development of icons and fonts for the original Apple Macintosh operating system in the early 1980s. After graduating from New York University with a PhD in fine arts, Susan Kare took a curatorial job at an art museum, where she quickly realised that she was on the wrong side of the creative equation. In 1982, Kare began work at Apple as the sole artist for screen graphics in the Macintosh group. In 1986, she joined Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer as the 10th employee. She later founded Susan Kare Design, a graphics studio, developing humane solutions to design problems for hundreds of clients. She worked at Pinterest from 2015-2021 and joined Niantic Labs as a Design Architect in 2021. She is the recipient of the AIGA medal (2018) and Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum/Smithsonian Institution (2019). Kare's work is in the collections of SFMoMA and MoMA in New York, where her work is currently featured in the group show Pirouette: Turning Points in Design (Jan-Oct 2025).

the designer who gave the Macintosh a smile

Susan Kare is the designer who "humanised" the computer in the early 1980s, best known for developing the distinctive icons, typefaces, and other pixel elements that gave the Apple Mac its characteristic - and widely emulated - friendly look and feel. During her years at Apple between 1982 and 1984, Susan Kare developed hundreds of icons, many of which are still in use and revered today. Her background in drawing, crafts and sculpture and lack of software graphics experience turned out to be an asset, allowing her to empathise with non-technical users of the new computer. Her contributions include many of the typefaces and symbols - such as the pixel icon "happy Macintosh" that greeted users on startup, the intuitive "trash can" for deleting files and the Command "looped square" symbol - helped transform the text-heavy computer interfaces into human, friendly experiences.

Combination of silver keycaps with icons by Susan Kare

Esc Keys

Esc Keys is a limited-edition release of physical and digital artworks by Susan Kare is a collaboration with Alastair Walker, founder of Asprey Studio - as well as painter, designer, and sculptor, primarily working in digital media - and takes a new twist on the iconic designs whilst celebrating one of the world’s most influential women in technology.

The name Esc Keys draws inspiration from both the ‘esc’ key on a computer keyboard and the broader concept of ‘escapism,’ inviting us to ‘escape’ into a space where technology becomes a means to explore the precious aspects of life reminding us of the humanity that lies beyond the digital.

This collection includes 32 new icons by Susan Kare, available in two handcrafted designs by the Asprey Studio Workshop: computer keycaps, or necklace pendants. Each physical piece comes paired with the digital artwork.