Vintage video games have a strong niche fandom with many collectors dedicated to preservation. However, when it comes to non-video-game consumer software, it’s much harder to find any information at all, even about extremely common programs that were a part of daily life.

The Print Shop was ubiquitous in computer labs and schools. It was an extremely simple program that let you make a few simple printed items — greeting cards, signs, banners and letterheads.

The above screen is the first step in creating a greeting card, picking from one of the nine borders above.

Next, you get a choice of a couple dozen bits of clipart. For the Avocado, the choice of picture was obvious. From this screen, you get to pick the size of the picture (small, medium or large) and whether it is centered or off to the side.

Then you got to choose from one of these snazzy fonts to write out your message. You then repeat the same border, clipart, message choices for the inside of the card, followed by a menu to let you print. You don’t even get a preview of your finished card.

We were lucky enough to have a personal computer in the late 80s, and my mother was obsessed with sending cards for every occasion, so I must have made a million of these greeting cards as a kid, not to mention all the banners and signs for parties and events. Later they would come out with new versions of Print Shop that featured more than two colors and much wider arrays of clipart, fonts and decorations. One of the options in later Print Shops was calendar pages, which of course I would print out and decorate with glitter glue for my corkboard.