The Print Shop Club
In 1984, Brøderbund Software released “The Print Shop,” a pioneering desktop publishing app that allowed anyone with a PC to easily make large banners, signs, and greeting cards at home for the first time. Here’s what made it special.
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One of the coolest features of The Print Shop was that you could type in any message, and the program would automatically format it so that it could be printed in a large font horizontally on a continuous feed of paper. Since graphics capability wasn’t common in printers in those days, the letters of the words in the banner were usually composed of simple blocks or many smaller characters grouped together to form the shapes of larger letters.
This was one of my favorite Apple II apps. I used it to make lots of foldable greeting cards, posters, and banners—where the flaw of the tractor-feed printers of the day was turned into a feature.
The Print Shop Club (via Brad Fitzpatrick, Hacker News):
We’ve created this website as a tribute to David, Martin, and The Print Shop, and all of the fond memories children, parents and teachers from the 1980s have of it. On this site we’ve emulated the Apple II and The Print Shop software, so that visitors can easily use The Print Shop to create their own cards, posters and banners. See the Documentation page to read The Print Shop manual, or just get started by clicking on the application window on the Application page once the Click to Start message appears.
It prints by downloading a PDF file.
Previously:
