# 1-Bit Icon Design (1ビットアイコン)

> The way of drawing icons in nothing but black and white that Susan Kare established for the Macintosh. She worked each design out on graph paper with one square standing for one pixel, and restated commands as ordinary objects, a pair of scissors for cutting and a bin for deleting, so the set could be read without a caption in any country. Her sketchbook now sits in a museum collection.

- IndexStyle No.534 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/one-bit-icon
- Kind: Technique · Family: UI Expression · Era: 1982–1990s
- Mood: Intimacy, Play, Technology
- Color cues: #000000 / #FFFFFF / #808080 (cues taken from reference works, not a fixed palette)

## Defining characteristics

- Two values only, black and white, with gray standing in as a checkerboard of alternating dots
- A one pixel outline closing each shape, and an interior that is either solid or dotted, never shaded
- Ordinary objects, scissors, a bin, a sheet of paper, standing in as the names of commands
- Visible traces of one dot placed per grid square, so diagonals break into steps

## Best used for

- Making small pictorial signs stand for commands with no caption, and read the same way in any language
- Getting shapes to stay distinguishable inside a small frame that cannot be scaled or smoothed

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Keep letters out of the picture and put the label on a separate line outside it. Any type alongside sits on the same bitmap grid, with no italics and no ornament.
- Layout & structure: Rule the grid first and draw with one square standing for one pixel. Close the outline before deciding the interior, and leave one square of clearance inside the frame.
- Material & texture: Two colours only, black and white. When a middle brightness is needed, build it by thinning the dots into a checkerboard rather than introducing gray. Leave diagonals as steps and do not smooth them.

## What to avoid

Adding gray or midtones to widen the range costs you the hard outline that only two values can produce, and the shape stops being legible at the size it is actually used.

## Application checklist

Before calling a piece an application of this style, check it against the defining characteristics:

- [ ] Two values only, black and white, with gray standing in as a checkerboard of alternating dots
- [ ] A one pixel outline closing each shape, and an interior that is either solid or dotted, never shaded
- [ ] Ordinary objects, scissors, a bin, a sheet of paper, standing in as the names of commands
- [ ] Visible traces of one dot placed per grid square, so diagonals break into steps
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Pictogram System (案内用ピクトグラム)** — Unified symbol systems that name facilities and actions without language. Tokyo 1964 systematized sport and wayfinding symbols; the AIGA/DOT transportation set became the public-domain world standard. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/pictogram-system
- **Pixel Art (ピクセルアート)** — Treats the pixel as an honest unit, building clear form from limited resolution and palette. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/pixel-art

## Further study

- MoMA と SFMOMA が共同で収蔵した Kare の原画帳の記録
- 日用品で命令を言い換えるという発想が、どこまで説明なしに通じたか
- 二値の市松で中間調を作る網点の使い分けと、その限界

## Reference works

- Macintosh System 2 のデスクトップ画面 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:System%202.png
- Kyra Ocean《MacPaint に描かれた Bill Atkinson の肖像》2013 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill%20Atkinson%E2%80%94creator%20of%20MacPaint%E2%80%94painted%20in%20MacPaint.jpg
- Susan Kare《Sad Mac》— Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sad%20mac.png

## Source of record

- The Museum of Modern Art — Susan Kare, "Apple Macintosh OS icon sketchbook", 1982（MoMA / SFMOMA 共同収蔵） — https://www.moma.org/collection/works/188382

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/one-bit-icon
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/one-bit-icon/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compose_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)