John Brownlee for Fast Company:

Many of her designs proved so universal that they have established a sort of universal grammar for computer GUIs. Although the cut-and-paste icon, the save icon, and the volume icon on your devices are probably a lot more colorful and higher resolution than the monochrome, 8-bit icons Kare designed during her time at Apple, they’re still probably very similar to what she originally came up with: a pair of scissors, a floppy disc, and a speaker.

Those original icons are still so minimalist and evocative. A big part of their charm is what they represented in the earliest days of the GUI — the promise of something magical and different.