Clarus: Is she a dog, or is she a cow?

Did you know that if you type the words “moof” or “Clarus” into iOS, the suggested emojis are a dog or a cow?! This makes me so happy.

“Moof” is a combination of “moo” and “woof”… which is exactly what a dogcow would say. All this will make sense to you if you are an old-school — or just plain old — Mac user like me.

Clarus the dogcow was actually a dingbat — part of the Cairo font. She was designed by the brilliant Susan Kare, who developed all the original Apple icons, fonts, and interface elements in the early 1980s. Do you use the lasso tool? How about the paint bucket? You can thank Susan Kare for those. The happy Mac smiling face, command key, trash can… all her.

The patterns you see at the bottom of the graphic above are very nostalgic to me. This is how different countries were shaded in the game “Risk” for the Mac Plus, which I played a lot in college. They were also the patterns available when designing birthday or welcome home banners in Print Shop that you would print out on your dad’s dot-matrix printer and scotch tape to the wall!