I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone seriously use the phrase ‘Desktop Publishing.’ Maybe the mid-2000s?
This episode explores the history of Desktop Publishing, its impact on DIY print culture, and how its ‘ransom note’ aesthetic was later echoed in early web design and why ‘brain rot’ videos feel like a return to folk aesthetics.
Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/02/22/2503-desktop-publishing/
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Click, Print, Publish
I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone seriously use the phrase ‘Desktop Publishing.’
Maybe the mid-2000s?
Then again, we don’t call Google Docs or Microsoft Word ‘Word Processors’ anymore either.
The concept of Desktop Publishing—laying out a document in a WYSIWYG interface and printing it—has dissolved. It’s no longer a distinct category. It’s just something you do, in many forms and formats.
It wasn’t always this way. Before desktop publishing, if you wanted something printed professionally, you had to go through a typesetter. It was slow, expensive, and locked behind industry expertise. An entire field devoted to permanently affixing words or images to a page.
That began to change in the 1960s with the Xerox 914.
‘Xerography’ or dry writing.
A process using static electricity to attract toner powder to a light-sensitive drum, which is then transferred to paper and fused with heat. But these machines were, and still are enormous and expensive.
I’ll skip Xerox PARC and Steve Jobs—history I presume you know.
But one thing rarely mentioned is the Apple LaserWriter, released shortly after the Macintosh in 1985. A $7000 printer in 1980s money, with built-in Adobe PostScript—software for printing fonts correctly.
That sounds expensive, but it could connect up to 16 Macs, bringing the cost per user down to $400. And unlike a copy machine, could print things from a computer. The same year, PageMaker, the first mainstream desktop publishing software, was released.
With a Mac, a printer, and PageMaker, you could bypass the entire print process. Small, affordable tools replaced massive typesetting systems overnight. Aldus software founder Paul Brainerd coined the term ‘Desktop Publishing’ as a marketing hook.
Back at Xerox PARC Ted Nelson, the godfather of hypertext, tried to convince his bosses that being able to print things out from the computer was going to be a big deal. He was right.
Growing up, Microsoft Paint was for drawing, Word was for writing, and MS Publisher was for printing. As a teen, I had a cracked copy of PaintShop Pro and did layout work in it—even though it wasn’t built for that. But that was normal. We all just used whatever software we could get.
When I first made zines in the early 2000s, they were still paste-and-print. People designed sections on a computer, printed them, cut them out, and physically pasted them onto a master copy before being photocopied. Printing from a computer was still more expensive than simple photocopying for print short runs—and still is.
The first time I saw a zine fully laid out digitally and got it printed in bulk at a shop was around 2005. I still do that today.
But I keep coming back to the phrase: Desktop Publishing.
There’s something there. A sense of possibility in the juxtaposition of those two words.
Almost like a kenning.
There’s magic in the promise of printing something digital into physical existence.
Maybe I’m a romantic, but I love print. Which is why I make my own zine. Speaking of which, a big thank you to all my recent mailing list subscribers—I have 3 copies left of Issue #12. If you’d like one, head to thejaymo.net/zine.
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There’s still something exciting about turning the ephemeral, scrolling world of the Internet into something tangible. Taking what I’ve written, making it real by printing it, and sending it out.
I use Affinity Publisher for my zine, a great piece of software that you only need to buy once. I’ve never used InDesign, so the learning curve was steep but I had no Adobe muscle memory to retrain. After 18 months of making issues of SSR, and having done some ebook design and layout, I’ve got my hands round it.
In the early days of computers and consumer printers, Desktop Publishing was widely mocked for producing ‘ransom note’ aesthetics—posters and documents with clashing fonts and chaotic layouts—the same charge that would later be levelled at early web pages. I can see why though, given how professionalised print media was in the ’90s and early 2000s. But all this DIY design revealed a latent folk aesthetic. People like weird stuff.
There’s a wave of nostalgia for the Geocities era folk aesthetic—when people fully controlled their own pages. Gen Z who weren’t even alive for it long for the customisation, the weirdness, the chaos.
Facebook, and Zuckerberg’s personal offence at users modifying their profiles—that has shaped the modern web into something rigid, sanitised. Flat design. UI guidelines. Cards. Everything uniform, frictionless, dull. Aesthetic fascism.
But the folk aesthetic is still alive in ‘Brain Rot’ videos on TikTok and Shorts. Layered text, split-screen chaos, low-effort deep-fried memes. It’s the ransom note aesthetic reborn in moving image for our hyper-mediated attention economy.
I recently added ‘Desktop Publisher’ to my LinkedIn bio. I realise I’m a writer, podcaster, and… Desktop Publisher- and that just sounds cool in 2025.
Last year, I wrote about the Doc Web, and I keep circling back to the same idea: I’m not interested in content. I’m interested in Publishing.
I ‘publish’ my zine. I ‘publish’ my blog posts. Even my podcast—I click “Publish” to put it out into the world. Mass-producing. Physicalising. Taking something virtual and making it tangible. It’s an idea that excites me in 2025.
Making Start Select Reset still gives me the same feeling I had in 1995 making my first zine with my friend Ben Walters about Sonic and Sega games, printed on his dad’s Risograph machine.
Hear me out. Desktop Publishing.
It has potential.
Permanently Moved
Permanently Moved (dot) Online is a quarterly audio personal podcast, written, recorded and edited by by @thejaymo
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