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Microsoft took note of ClickArt’s success, and thought to eliminate the extra step of having to install additional software to access artwork. Source: Vetusware The 1990s Source: MakeUseOfīy the mid-1990s, T/Maker was the largest distributor of unlicensed images, with a library of roughly half a million in 1995. While it’s not clear if that particular program came equipped with its own image library, the same company began producing and selling groups of bitmap images under a new name: ClickArt. Not long after that, however, the T/Maker Company collaborated with Apple to develop another word processing program, WriteNow. As the story goes, they were the only two applications pre-installed on this historic Macintosh 128K.īut what made MacPaint so important was its role as the first program that allowed users to manipulate bitmap images: The “simple line art,” according to The Atlantic, that comprised “early electronic clip art.” Source: DigiBarn That’s partially due to the 1984 development of MacPaint, which was released alongside Apple’s word processing program, MacWrite. But the $400 software didn’t come with these image libraries - instead, they were available on separate floppy disks that had to be purchased for $90 each.īut despite this seemingly trailblazing effort on behalf of IBM, it was really Apple who may have emerged as a leader in the digital image space, at least around the early-to-mid 1980s. Think of it as a primitive version of PowerPoint. That was made possible by a program called VCN ExecuVision, a presentation program created in 1983 for IBM personal computers. It all began with the idea to create a digital library of images.
The History of Clip Art The 1980s Source: Computer History Museum But where did clip art come from, anyway? Today, we’re honoring its legacy with a trip through time. That’s an important distinction - clip art isn’t limited to Microsoft, and actually had several predecessors before it found its way into the likes of Word and PowerPoint.Īnd maybe its retirement was for the best - when I think back to some of its more popular images, they would look positively antiquated today. Clip art opened up a whole new world of visuals for academic assignments - not to mention, the newsletters that my childhood, future-writer self liked to put together for fun.īut today, clip art has become a bit of a thing of the past, at least since Microsoft retired its version in 2014. When I was in school, the only way to include a picture in a book report, for example, was with enough luck to find what I was looking for in a magazine. I've been sitting on planes and seen people walk by me with them on T-shirts and with them on baseball caps.Today, it’s hard to imagine a world where you can’t procure an image just by searching for it online. "I've been to Africa and seen them on a menu," she said. "And so I see him a lot and think, 'Wow, I really drew that badly.' "īelleville says she sees her work everywhere now.
"He's the most poorly drawn and sadly one of the most used ones," she said. Belleville said she's not satisfied with that one. You've probably seen the guy jumping in the air clicking his heels in celebration, or the guy with a light bulb over his head, who just had a GREAT idea.
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But in 1995, she left the company and came up with the idea for "Screen Beans," a series of simple, black stick figure guys wearing hats. oh, my God, I have to get a job."īelleville started working on PowerPoint for Microsoft. "And then my senior year of college it kind of hit me. "I grew up my whole life knowing that I wanted to be an artist," she said.
NPR spoke with one of Clip Art's most prolific artists, Cathy Belleville. But it's still a big moment for anyone who for years relied on Clip Art's ubiquitous, if sometimes rudimentary artwork.
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