1987 Adobe Illustrator Video Shows What It Was Like At The Beginning

Video screenshot via Adobe Creative Cloud

These days, creatives do their digital touch-ups and beziers without much thought, but there was a time when all this was mind-blowing.

For illustration, no pun intended, let’s travel a little further back to 1987. A video from that year, found by Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder, allows viewers to meet Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock, who is shown demonstrating the very first version of Adobe Illustrator.

The explainer arrived in a VHS cassette that early users received with their copy of the program. In it, Warnock recommends working with a drawing that the user had done on paper, or a piece of clipart, demonstrating with an illustration he’d just scanned in and sent to his Apple Macintosh computer.

Warnock is captured drawing curves on the flawed artwork and creating something more polished-looking via the black-and-white interface. He also shows off the revolutionary ability to preview the overall look in a separate window while you were working.

“This is a product we are very, very excited about. It addresses the professional illustration market and it has a lot of capabilities that you won’t find in other programs,” Warnock quips.

[via Boing Boing and Adobe Creative Cloud, video and cover image via Adobe Creative Cloud]