If you mean the — late 1985. If you mean the official release — March 1987. If you mean the idea — 1984–85, when John Warnock imagined a PostScript drawing tool.
Adobe Illustrator was , for the Apple Macintosh. Development actually began in 1985 as a way to commercialize Adobe's in-house font development software and leverage the PostScript page description language. The "Solid Review": Adobe Illustrator (2026 Edition) when was illustrator invented
However, the invention of Illustrator was not just a technical breakthrough; it was a strategic triumph for Adobe. In 1987, the biggest competitor was Aldus FreeHand. The competition was fierce, forcing Adobe to innovate rapidly. By 1988, Adobe released Illustrator 88 (version 1.6), which introduced the "Bézier curve" editing tools that are now ubiquitous. The software’s integration with Adobe Photoshop (released in 1990) eventually solidified its dominance. By making Illustrator the standard for vector graphics and Photoshop the standard for raster images, Adobe created a duopoly that persists to this day. If you mean the — late 1985
By late 1986, the software was stable enough to demo. Adobe announced Illustrator in late 1986, then shipped version 1.0 in exclusively for the Apple Macintosh (the Mac Plus, SE, or II). Adobe Illustrator was , for the Apple Macintosh
Before Illustrator, digital graphic design was clunky. Programs like MacPaint (1984) worked in (pixel-based) graphics, which meant images lost quality as soon as you tried to scale them up. Designers, typographers, and illustrators needed a way to create smooth, scalable graphics — logos, typefaces, diagrams — that could be resized without becoming blurry or jagged.