Kai Krause
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Kai Krause (born 1957 in Dortmund, Germany) is a software artist and user interface designer best known for founding MetaCreations and designing the interface for Bryce. MetaCreations was known as MetaTools until the merger with Fractal Design in 1997 to develop and sell software titles such as Kai's Power Tools, Bryce, Corel Painter, Poser, LivePicture, Raydream, Infini-D, Show, Goo, and Soap. Krause was one of the first to broaden the category of graphical user interfaces by applying more design principles and realtime interaction support to the user, which were not widely deployed in the 1980s. User interface elements like soft shadows, rounded corners, and translucency, which are today common in Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux, appeared already in products of his companies.
Krause moved to California in 1976, and worked with synthesizers and vocoders. He worked on almost thirty records and movies, and received a Clio award for the sound effects on the first Star Trek movie. Krause has a Master's degree from the Brooks institute in Santa Barbara, California (1996), and a Doctorate h.c. from the University of Essen, Germany (1999). Time honored him in 1997 as "Future Leader", and Newsweek selected him as one of the 50 most influential thinkers of the next decade.
Today Kai Krause lives and works in the 1000-year-old castle Burg Rheineck near Bonn in Germany, which he calls Byteburg. In February 2005, the "DEMO" conference acknowledged him as one of the Top 15 Innovators of the last 15 years. [1]
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[edit] Kai Power Tools
Kai's Power Tools are a set of digital image editing software created by Kai Krause. A part of which were available as Plug-Ins for Adobe Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint. With the closure of MetaCreations, Kai's Power Tools are now owned by Corel Corporation and were released with other former MetaCreations products including Bryce, Corel Painter and Poser.
[edit] Quotes
- "An interface is about hiding complexity from the user, It's about guiding a process, without cognitive understanding of what goes on beneath. Interface design is the art of enveloping the observer in an enticing, "try this" exploration with ever-new elements and designs as the tools to triumph in new territories."
- "Make plans and take pictures" [2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Conference Honors Those Who Defined the Best Products and Technologies of the last 15 years
- ^ The World Question Center 2005
