Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.
He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.
I never met Paul Brainerd during our years in Seattle, but I fondly remember using an early version of PageMaker in the late 1980s. In our junior year at Cornell, Tonya and I took over as editors of the Risley Revue literary magazine; novelist Matt Ruff, who wrote the wonderful Fool on the Hill (set at Cornell) as an undergrad, had been on the staff as well, but he and the previous editors were two years ahead of us. The Risley Revue had a tradition of hand-printing its issues on a letterpress donated by the New York Times. (Risley Hall was the creative and performing arts dorm; we snuck in on the creative side.) One of our innovations as editors was to lay out the interior of each issue in PageMaker on a Macintosh Plus with a Radius Full Page Display that Cornell made available for that purpose; we continued to hand-print linocuts for the covers. As part of a Communications major internship, Tonya continued using PageMaker to lay out the newsletter for our local MUGWUMP user group, under the guidance of several desktop publishing professionals in the group.
But what I didn’t know about Brainerd’s story was how, after Aldus merged with Adobe and left him worth $100 million, he put his skills and money to use making the world a better place. That’s a far cry from many of today’s tech billionaires, who seem more interested in increasing their net worth as though it were a video game high score.
I remember Paul well from my time at Aldus (as does Glenn, I’m sure, and other TidBITS members with a Seattle background). His enthusiasm was infectious and that made him a good leader, although there were a few missteps borne of that enthusiasm, such as the time when all employees were expected to take time away from our regular jobs and cold-call customers just to see how they were doing. I never realized that Paul was only 15 years older than me.
Paul had a brilliant idea, formed a company to see it to fruition, and passed it on to capable hands when it was time, making ethical decisions all along the way.
I too remember Paul from the last few years of Aldus before it merged with Adobe. Both were great companies and testimonies to their visionary leaders. Paul Brainerd, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock were competitors; they were also collaborative. Their companies “grew into” each other, and when Paul was ready to retire to philanthropy, the merger was an opportunity for everyone.
Paul was a gentle storm, a towering figure rapidly striding down the corridor, leaning forward slightly as if making a wake in the air to lower the friction and speed his progress. When he arrived, he was fully engaged, friendly and listening.
He was also on the Board of Trustees for “On The Boards,” as Seattle dance theater during the growth period when they moved to the old ACT theater on Queen Anne. I was friends with many on the staff and a volunteer there, “byte-head on hoof,” who created their networks, setup their servers and computers, and taught them how to use…PageMaker, amongst other software titles. It was in this role I got to know Paul better than my days at Aldus. He was thoughtful and supportive of the work I did for OTB, and afterwards in my own endeavors at philanthropy.
I didn’t realize that he was just a year older than I was. I went to work for Aldus in the summer of ‘88 working on quality control/bug testing for Freehand 2.0 (produced by Altsys, but we worked on it at Aldus). I was also in charge of making sure that users in the beta program got the newest version, on disk, for testing. I met him briefly. Sad to hear he passed. Ironically, I got a job as a designer at Microsoft later that year because of my work in PageMaker (very long story). I owe a lot to Aldus.
I used PageMaker when it was still Aldus, as I was responsible for doing the desktop publishing for a grocery store realty magazine every month. I kept using PM when Adobe took it over but I preferred it under Aldus, overall. People like Paul Brainerd really made the early days of desktop publishing a reality and I’m grateful for his creation!
My college roommate had one of the first releases of PageMaker on his Mac. For fun, I laid out a chemistry lab report in the format of a scientific journal article, e.g., using columns and graphs, and I printed it on the university LaserWriter. At first, the TA refused to accept it on the grounds that it obviously was produced by a large team and not simply by me.
