The Original Wood File Drawer Icon — 1985-1986

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	WIN XP DOWNLOAD (27 KB)

Back in the early-to-mid 90s, I trained and supported a bunch of advertising creatives during their transition from drawing-board to key-board. Using computers came very easy for me, but not for most of them. I had bought one of those ‘happy’ computers when they were first introduced in 1984, so I also had a fairly good head-start.

To help my talented colleagues visualize where to save their files without immediately losing them, it occurred to me to introduce the wood file drawer icon I created in the late-80s. Being so visual, seeing something more familiar than folders inside other folders, I thought it was, at least, worth a try.

My hunch was a success. “Oh, I get it.” “Ahhh…” Projects were now being saved in the “filing cabinet” instead of the previous usual places, such as deep within the system folder, and the applications folder.

The first incarnation of my file drawer design was gray scale. A year or two later, I converted it to color when I upgraded my hardware. That’s it, top left; displayed in its glorious original colors … all 16 of them.

I also posted the original icon as a free download on AOL (this was before the Web was invented). The last time I looked — maybe about 1996 — it had been downloaded over 100,000 times.

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