I’m Kayla. I learned design on clunky PCs and loud old Macs. Big CRT monitors. Zip disks that clicked like tiny robots. I kept some of that gear. So, I turned it all on and used the same apps I grew up with. I made posters, logos, and a fake zine cover. My hands remembered more than my brain. Muscle memory is wild.
For a detailed play-by-play of booting these relics back to life, you can dive into this full retrospective.
Was it perfect? Nope. Was it fun? Oh yes.
Photoshop 7 (2002) — gritty, honest, and still weirdly fast
I used Photoshop 7 on a Dell Dimension and a beige G3 tower. Back then, the Healing Brush felt like magic. I tested it again on an old headshot. It fixed skin and dust, but not too smooth. The grain stayed human. I liked that.
Save for Web still works fine. I exported a banner as a GIF. Colors held up. Type stayed crisp. CMYK did the job for a small postcard, but the color settings were a bit clunky. I had to poke around to get profiles right.
Little things were strong. Levels. Clone Stamp. The move tool. It all feels snappy.
- What I loved: Healing Brush, simple tools, fast feel
- What bugged me: color management is a maze, file sizes get heavy, large brushes lag
Did it crash? Sometimes. I saved every five minutes out of habit. Old habits pay rent.
Illustrator 10 — the pen tool that raised me
I opened an old logo file from college. AI format. It loaded clean. The pen tool still feels like a good knife. Sharp and steady. Pathfinder was fine for shapes. Gradient Mesh worked for a shiny orange. Transparency flattened on print, so I used basic blends instead. That saved me glare and grief.
I made a one-page brand sheet. Header, logo, color swatches, notes. Quick and tidy. Symbols helped with repeats. I forgot how nice that is.
- What I loved: pen tool is king, Pathfinder, stable type
- What bugged me: transparency and printing can fight, effects feel dated
It made me slow down, which I needed. Simple tools make simple choices. That’s a gift.
The slower rhythm also nudged me back toward the stripped-down grids and negative space I love—an approach I unpack further in my breakdown of how modernist graphic design actually works for me.
CorelDRAW 9 — sign shop muscle
I ran CorelDRAW 9 on an old Windows box and cut vinyl on a dusty plotter we keep for fun. PowerClip let me mask a photo inside text. Clean edges. Contour made a fat outline for a sticker. Spot colors looked strong on screen, but hairline strokes can print too thin. I bumped lines to 0.25 pt to be safe.
- What I loved: PowerClip, fast node edits, great for signs and decals
- What bugged me: color shifts if you’re sloppy, hairlines lie, exports need care
I exported EPS for the cutter. It tracked fine. The shop smelled like warm vinyl. That smell takes me back.
Macromedia FreeHand MX — the quiet hero
I built a quick poster with three pages in one file. That’s the FreeHand trick. One file, many pages, light and fast. The pencil tool felt smooth. Kerning was easy. Print preview was picky, though. I had to nudge settings to avoid lines dropping out.
- What I loved: multi-page layout in a vector app, clean path tools
- What bugged me: print quirks, now a ghost after Adobe shut it down
It’s gone, but it’s not forgotten. Some days I miss it more than pizza. Design-history nerds can revisit Adobe FreeHand, originally developed by Altsys and later acquired by Macromedia, was a vector graphics editor used for professional illustration and desktop publishing. After Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, FreeHand was discontinued, with Adobe Illustrator serving as its successor. for the full story.
QuarkXPress 4.1 vs PageMaker 6.5 — newsrooms in a box
I mocked up a two-column zine cover. Big headline. Pull quote. Grainy photo. Quark’s master pages were solid. Text linked across boxes without drama. Collect for Output saved my fonts and images in one folder. I printed clean on a LaserJet.
PageMaker felt softer. Good for church bulletins and flyers. I used it for a school fair program once. It worked, but kerning needed hand touch. Type breaks were fussy.
- Quark loved: master pages, export discipline, clean output
- PageMaker loved: friendly flow, quick to learn
- Both bugged: missing fonts ruin your night, hyphenation can be goofy
Did I yell at a missing font alert? Yes. Then I laughed. Then I fixed it.
If you ever find yourself spinning up one of these retro page-layout apps to create an eye-catching one-sheet for an adults-only social meet-up—think private cocktail mixers or lifestyle gatherings—you can peek at the kind of event details that demand clear yet discreet design on the Hopkinsville Swingers page, where dates, locations, and community guidelines are laid out in a way that could spark ideas for clean typography and smart hierarchy.
Paint Shop Pro 7 — the scrappy cousin
Cheap, fast, and light. I batch-converted a folder of JPEGs for a gallery email. It flew. I made a bevel button just for old time’s sake. It looked like 2001, in a good way. But CMYK was a pain. I stayed in RGB and moved files to Photoshop for print work.
- What I loved: speed, batch tools, clear menus
- What bugged me: weak CMYK, filters feel dated
If you need quick edits on a home PC, this still cooks.
Fireworks MX 2004 — web graphics that won’t quit
I sliced a mock landing page. Slices exported neat PNGs with hover states. Rollovers worked with simple code. The vector tools inside a bitmap canvas felt smooth. You know what? For web buttons and sprite sheets, I’d still use it.
- What I loved: slices, crisp text, tiny file sizes
- What bugged me: exported HTML is messy, some fonts render odd
It’s a time capsule, but not a bad one.
Watching slices spring to life on hover reminded me how much I still love motion-first thinking—something I explore in this look at what dynamic graphic design means to me.
A tiny shoutout to the odd toys
- Kai’s Power Tools: chrome, glass, glow. So cheesy. So fun.
- Bryce 3D: fake mountains for a trance flyer. My teenage soul cheered.
In the same spirit of firing up quirky side-projects while a progress bar crawls, I also poked around a retro-styled browser game—give Token Keno a whirl; it’s an ultra-quick diversion that keeps your creativity loose while your vintage Mac finishes a 300 dpi export.
They’re not serious tools. But design needs play.
The sounds and the sweat
Old fans hum. CRTs glow warm. The Wacom Graphire pen feels light and clicky. Zip disks whirr, and the tray sticks if you’re rude to it. I made coffee, then another. I waited on a progress bar. I watched a gradient render line by line. Slow can be a mood.
What still holds up
- Pen tools and clean vector logic
- Master pages and tidy type
- Save often, name files well, keep links together
- EPS and PDF when you need safe output
For a stash of modern free textures and mock-ups that still feel at home in these vintage apps, check out Moon and Back Graphics.
What doesn’t? Heavy effects, or fancy transparency on old printers. They bite back.
Should you try this now?
Maybe. If you like learning the bones of design. If you enjoy limits. If you own old gear or can run a virtual machine. Just keep copies of your fonts. Export a PDF. Don’t trust one file to behave on every box. If you're ready to skip the nostalgia trip altogether, For users seeking modern alternatives to FreeHand, options include Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and open-source tools like Inkscape and GIMP.
And please, back up. Twice. Ask me why. Actually, don’t.
My take
Old design software is like an old bike. No gears. No screen. You push harder, but you feel the road. These apps taught me to plan, to name layers, to kern with care. They made me slow, which made me steady.
Would I run a big job on them now? Not unless I had to. Would I use them for a poster, a logo sketch, or a Sunday zine