Aldus

Brainerd founded Aldus in 1984, naming the company after Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Venetian printer who standardized typefaces, invented italics and created the first pocket-size books. Aldus was incorporated in Seattle the same year that Apple introduced its Macintosh computer, which had a graphical interface that users navigated with a mouse. Within five years, sales of PageMaker topped $100 million a year. Apple’s Macintosh computer took off, too. Aldus merged with Adobe Systems in 1994