Command Key logo Use selection

Recently, foreign media and we shared the early members of the MAC team Andy Hertzfeld about the command key icon design process, specifically as follows:

We feel that it is important for the user to be able to bring up each menu instruction directly on the keyboard, so we have added a special key to the keyboard to bring up the menu commands. We call it "Apple key", while pressing the "Apple key" and another key, the user can bring up the corresponding menu instructions. We put a small Apple logo on the right side of each menu item and keyboard instructions to connect the keyboard to the command.

One afternoon Steve Jobs suddenly broke into the software development department at Bandley III and was distracted by something. That's not unusual! I think he's just seen the MacDraw for the first time, and the app's menu is longer than any other app.

"There are too many Apple logos on the screen!" It's ridiculous! The use of these Apple logos is simply useless! must stop! "

Then we explained to him that we had to add the sign of the command key after every project we had, and he suggested we better find a different logo to replace the apple logo. Because it's about the user manual and the hard drive hardware, we only have a few days to come up with another new logo.

The icon is small, but also with the meaning of "instruction", it is too difficult! We couldn't come up with any good ideas at all. Just as our bitmap artist, Susan Kare, had a dictionary with a global icon handy, she began to look for it, hoping to find a suitable icon that would be different and attractive, at least in relation to the concept of a menu instruction.

Eventually she found a floral icon in Sweden, which is an interesting feature, and the camping site uses it as an icon to draw attention to others. She quickly renders the small icon as a percentage of x 16 and explains it to the entire team. 20 years later today, even in OS X, the Macintosh continues to use this small icon.