Kai Krause - History

History

Krause significantly broadened conventional notions of the graphical user interface by applying innovative design principles and providing realtime interaction for the user, neither of which were widely deployed in the 1980s because of the low graphics abilities of the current hardware, and most users found them too oblique to learn and remember. Krause's products pioneered user interface techniques like soft shadows, rounded corners, and translucency, which were adopted in the Aqua of Mac OS X in 2001, and later became common in Windows XP and Linux.

The company which he co-founded, MetaCreations Corp., began as HSC Software, which released the first version of Kai's breakthrough product, Kai's Power Tools (a.k.a. "KPT"), in 1992. HSC went on to release a second version of KPT, and the first version of Bryce, and several other titles before changing their name to Metatools in 1995. This name remained until 1997, when a rapid series of mergers with Fractal Design, RayDream, Specular, and RTG (Real-Time Geometry) necessitated a new identity for the growing organization: MetaCreations.

For the rest of the 1990s, MetaCreations continued to develop a wide variety of successful graphical software titles. Application and interfaces for which Krause was most directly responsible include Kai's Power Tools, Live Picture, Bryce, Kai's Power Show, Kai's Power Goo, Convolver, Kai's Photo Soap and Poser.