Meet Adobe Illustrator 88 (1987) - History lessons
I finally got my hands on the video of which I talk so much about in my presentations: John Warnock in person, presenting Adobe Illustrator 88 back in 1987 [thanks to Terry Hemphill for sending it to me]. For our "younger" users, John Warnock, together with Chuck Geschke, was one of the founders of Adobe Systems.
The concept behind Illustrator 88 was so new that it needed a video tape to explain what it did and how to use it. For example, how would you have known how to use the Pen Tool, had you never seen one before? How would you have known about direction lines and anchor points? The Pen Tool is now available in most graphics applications, and we almost take it for granted.
Check out the computer he is using, and how he talks about a "scanner hooked to the Macintosh"; it's a real treat and a lot of memories for me. This was the beginning people! John Warnock wanted a way to draw PostScript, and Illustrator was his answer. And look at where we are now as far as vector graphics are concerned.
The "Tutorial" part of the video is extremely interesting as John Warnock takes us through operations such as opening the application itself, and shows all of the available tools and how they work.
This is the full 34 minute version of it (divided into five parts). You can find the whole series on my YouTube Channel, or click on the links below to access individual parts directly.
Meet Adobe Illustrator 88
- Part 1/5 - Introduction and Demo on how to create art using a scanned drawing as a template. [00:06:20]
- Part 2/5 - Demo on how to create a drawing from scratch without scanned template. [00:07:27]
- Part 3/5 - The Adobe Illustrator Tutorial. John Warnock starts with: "Now is the time for you to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator". [00:07:25]
- Part 4/5 - The Adobe Illustrator Tutorial (continued). [00:05:47]
- Part 5/5 - The Adobe Illustrator Tutorial (continued). [00:06:36]
If you want to know more about the history of Adobe Systems, the book "Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story" by Pamela Pfiffner is a great read. When I got it back in 2003, I read it all in one go. Go figure...
Enjoy and make sure to comment. Anyone among those who actually watched the original tape?
Oh I remember it so vividly… Back in the days when I had my own media agency, I did many websites for various Clients. And, the activity, which was probably most time consuming, was to correct or add content to their sites on a very regular basis. And these changes were also of the type which had to be done “right now”. Some of my Clients decided to get equipped with their own copy of GoLive, or Dreamweaver, but that meant additional software and training. This also meant that Clients had control over the design (and we all know how much Clients love large text, blinking GIFs, or have a weird and very personal color taste).
