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Legendary Apple artist Susan Kare has released 32 new retro-inspired icons that are designed to live outside of your computer screen. Instead, the “Esc Keys” collection Kare created in collaboration with Asprey Studio consists of mechanical keyboard keycaps and wearable pendants, each featuring an 8-bit pixel art illustration like a dog, a plant, mail, and coffee.
While these icon designs are brand new, the style will be recognizable to anyone familiar with Kare’s work. She’s responsible for creating much of the iconography on the first Macintosh personal computer operating system, including the “Happy Mac” boot-up icon and the original floppy disk file save symbol.
Kare and Asprey Studio founder Alastair Walker told Fast Company that “there’s hidden meaning” to each of the new designs that represent things that people can enjoy doing away from their keyboards. Each piece in the Esc Keys collection is crafted in silver or gold-coated silver and is limited edition — from 30 to 120 pieces depending on the icon — so purchasing something won’t come cheap.
Prices start at $650 for silver computer keys, ranging up to $2,064 for necklace pendants in gold vermeil (a method that coats solid silver in a layer of gold). Solid gold options are “available upon request” apparently, and each piece comes with its own blockchain-inscribed digital artwork to verify “ownership and provenance.”
Kare has paid similar homage to Apple’s computing history in her other art collections. There are prints of her original Macintosh designs available on her website, and in 2014, she sold hand-painted Jolly Roger pirate flags, inspired by the one she painted to fly above the Apple campus office in 1983, for up to $2,500.
