I scanned this pamphlet a friend gave me for my birthday (I collect this kind of stuff). The order of the pages is in the image descriptions. Wikipedia is useless here and I don't dive very deep on this kind of stuff often but I want to write about it, so I'll just write about what I think about the different things.
The pamphlet came inside of a box+manual+3.5" floppy disc set for MICROGRAFX In-a-Vision computer aided drawing software, this packaging is also pretty nice quality. The box and the binder are made of sturdy cardboard wrapped in canvass, they're both blue, white and red lines on gray though so it's not as eye-catching. Thinking of modern software I'd like this kind of binder manual for, Blender would be nice but it would have to weight like 20 pounds. I'll post pictures of the In-a-Vision package later cause I can only post 4 pictures in one post here.
Every page of this thing is doing it's darndest to evoke ideas the company wanted associated with their software, and to show off every shape and line and gradient you can make on a computer with that software. Studying this feels like hurtling, comet like, through space without time. The language is very business focused but also evocative. Highlights gotta be the intro to their slide creation software Charisma "There may be but a singal constant in the ever-changing world of graphics for business: given equal data, the presentation that looks and communicates teh best wins. Which is why all you need is one thing -- Charisma." or Designer 3.0 "Imagination. The essence of ingenuity. Those who harness it stand above, on an entirely different plateau. The ability to envision and create while others merely watch and duplicate. It is, perhaps, the most fundamental element of success."
The outside pages: On the front we got what I'm gonna call the W-planet, the gradients, the rings, the big W and solid lines around it that imply abundant or multiple orbital motions mingling with the dashed yellow arrows that indicate something even more abstract. The words in the top left describe the contents of the pamphlet, the word Continuum on the front is supposed to evoke their end-user support ethos they wrote more about on the back there.
The first inside pages: We've got the ability to export graphics in different formats with Xport. We've got vector graphics with Draw Plus and most importantly Clip Art. Strewn about the page are pieces of clip art. The number of times windows are showing up in here I'm starting to think the W on the W-planets are meant to remind the viewer of the Windows operating system this software was designed for. This is the least focused page of this thing.
The next inside pages: open this brochure all the way and chaos unfolds, the orbital paths become more erratic, there are so many distractions. The word "B E Z I E R" shoots across a page and is interrupted twice, first by the pitch for Designer 3.0 and next by the words "concept to reality". The bold text in this part talks about Batch Print, Telegrafx and SlideShow. I was born in 1992, so I'm just learning that just making a slideshow used to require a series of software tools, still need tool chains for a lot of stuff on the computer these days but not to like, put the slides into the slideshow, you do that all in one thing now, sometimes we do it in a web browser.
The page for Charisma, their graph/chart making software is actually a bit more on theme. the clip art is all very "imagine business" and features images of slides made with Charisma for the fictional VectorWorld Inc. It's still pretty chaotic though, most of the slides are tilted at jaunty angles, the box for the pitch text for Charisma is interrupted by the flying text "all you need is charisma"
Thanks for reading! Comment any feedback. (I'm aware that the image description text seems to crowd out the images, especially on mobile, not sure what to do about that)