HAMBURGER anyone?

By now you must agree, the hamburger icon is a classic. Even if you do not necessarily know it by that name, its three black bars, stacking upon each other, are as familiar as your mouse's cursor – It’s a constant companion on your cyber journey since the day you got your first computer. But who designed this icon? The hamburger is one of those UI features that's so old, so mysterious, that it seems author-less. But someone designed this little visual gem.

It turns out that the burger comes from the Xerox "Star" personal workstation, one of the earliest graphical user interfaces. Its designer, Norm Cox, was responsible for the entire system's interface - including the icons that would effectively communicate functionality to the earliest computer users. The hamburger, which looks like a list, seemed like a good way to remind users of a menu list. Skip to about 21:05 in the following video to see an explanation: http://vimeo.com/61556918

In a recent article, Cox responded:

I designed that symbol many years ago as a "container" for contextual menu choices. It would be somewhat equivalent to the context menu we use today when clicking over objects with the right mouse button.

Its graphic design was meant to be very "road sign" simple, functionally memorable, and mimic the look of the resulting displayed menu list. With so few pixels to work with, it had to be very distinct, yet simple. I think we only had 16x16 pixels to render the image. (or possibly 13x13... can't remember exactly).

Interesting inside joke... we used to tell potential users that the image was an "air vent" to keep the window cool. It usually got a chuckle, and made the mark much more memorable.

It's been nice to see that so many of our designs from those early pioneering years have stood the test of time and become ubiquitous symbols in our UI's.

I doubt that Cox would have ever imagined that his now infamous Hamburger icon would become as familiar as a stop sign. It seems we can add the hamburger to a growing list of historic UI mysteries solved. It’s implementation however, according to a recent debate between two of my colleagues, is still up for debate. Perhaps we should rename it to the air vent menu.