Celebrating a Quarter of a Century – Happy Anniversary Adobe Illustrator!

2012 is an important year for Adobe Illustrator, marking 25 years since the software first shipped as version 1.1, March 19, 1987.

It’s hard to even remember the world of professional graphic design in 1987, where technical drawing pens, French curves, X-acto knives, and rubylith masking film were the tools of choice. It was a world where just printing a beautiful, smooth curve from a computer to a black-and-white printer was magic, and being able to use a desktop computer program, Adobe Illustrator 1.1, to actually create those shapes in a fully controlled way was pure freedom.

Today, that has all changed. The impact of Illustrator is all around us. From the most mundane items we use every day – your morning coffee in its paper cup and hot sleeve with its logos and copy – to most every commercial item that has a logo or that comes in a decorative package. From the shoes and clothing you wear, to the automobile you drive, to the toys you buy for your kids (or yourself), to the TV shows and movies you watch – chances are that Illustrator played a part in their design and production.

So please join the Adobe and its Illustrator team in celebrating this silver anniversary. Take a look back at the world of design in 1987, and a look forward with this sneak peek at what’s coming for Illustrator as part of Creative Suite 6 and Adobe Creative Cloud in this story on Adobe Design Center.

You can always keep up-to-date on the freshest Illustrator news by following Illustrator on Twitter and Facebook.