Legendary Apple artist Susan Kare has released 32 new retro-style icons that are designed to live beyond your computer screen. Instead, the “Esc Keys” collection, which Kare created in collaboration with Asprey Studio, consists of mechanical keyboard pads and pendants, each with an 8-bit pixel illustration, such as a dog, plant, mail, or coffee.
Although the design of these icons is completely new, the style will be recognizable to anyone familiar with Kare’s work. She is responsible for creating much of the iconography for the first Macintosh operating system, including the Happy Mac boot icon and the original floppy disk symbol.
Kare and Asprey studio founder Alastair Walker told Fast Company that “there’s a hidden meaning” behind each of the new designs, which represent things people can enjoy without sitting at a keyboard. Each piece in the Esc Keys collection is made of sterling silver or gold-plated silver and is a limited edition – 30 to 120 pieces, depending on the icon – so it won’t be cheap.
Prices start at $650 for silver computer keys and go up to $2,064 for gold vermeil neck pendants (a method of covering pure silver with a layer of gold). Pure gold options are apparently “available upon request,” and each piece has its own digital artwork inscribed on the blockchain to prove “ownership and provenance.”
Kare has paid similar homage to Apple’s computer history in her other art collections. Prints of her original Macintosh designs can be found on her website, and in 2014 she sold hand-painted pirate flags with Jolly Roger, inspired by the one she drew to fly over Apple’s campus office in 1983, for up to $2,500.
