A Brief History of Graphic Design Software

The history of graphic design technology is anything but brief; there’s an entire feature-length movie that barely scratches the surface. In this post, we’ll review the major players in the industry and the formative events and developments that have occurred since the 1970s.

Major Players in Graphic Design Software

One of the biggest players in the evolution of graphic design software is the current industry titan, Adobe Systems. Before Adobe swallowed up its competitors to become the behemoth it is today, the other major players were Aldus, Altsys, Macromedia, Quark, and Xerox PARC.

Depending on your age and tenure in graphic design, some of these names may sound familiar. Aldus Corporation developed PageMaker (the software that brought desktop publishing to the masses). Altsys Corporation offered an early competitor to vector graphics program Adobe Illustrator (FreeHand). Macromedia produced the monumental Dreamweaver, Shockwave, and Director applications. Quark is best known for QuarkXPress, a WYSIWYG desktop publishing software that held 95% market share in the 1990s. And Xerox PARC made some of the greatest foundational contributions of all—GUI, WYSIWYG text editing, and the computer mouse.

Where are these players today? Most of them have disappeared amid mergers and acquisitions. Although Quark is still around, it has fallen from the great heights of popularity it achieved in the 90s. Risen from the ashes of many of the former competitors is the one that has managed to secure space on every modern designer’s hard drive: Adobe.

The Big Shifts in the Evolution of Graphic Design Programs

The first big breakthrough was the development of one of the first image editing programs, SuperPaint, by Xerox PARC employee Richard Shoup in 1973. Apple’s Macintosh, introduced in 1984, became the vehicle for such revolutionary programs as PageMaker (1985), Illustrator (1987), FreeHand (1988), and Photoshop (1990). In 1995, Adobe received a slap on the wrist for creating a monopoly in the vector graphics software market when they announced the acquisition of Aldus, which included the software FreeHand. Adobe was forced to divest FreeHand and seek permission from the FTC for future acquisitions for the next 10 years.

The 2000s saw the introduction of the Adobe Creative Suite (2002), the re-acquisition—and subsequent demise—of FreeHand by Adobe (2005), and the rise and fall of Flash, a deprecated multimedia software platform.

Today, we stand on the precipice of a whole new chapter in graphic design history. The advent of augmented reality and virtual reality, the pervasiveness of smartphones, and the promise of 5G and the Internet of Things all point to yet another dramatic shift in the evolution of graphic design technology. We’re ready for it. Are you?

About Kara Franco
Kara writes copy that speaks. She has a knack for creating clear, compelling messages without wasting words. She is passionate about digital marketing and believes that copy is the cornerstone of user experience.

Copywriter + Content Strategist
Kara@diacedesigns.com