Desktop publishing leader Paul Brainerd dies at 78

Paul Brainerd, the businessman-turned-conservationist who helped launch the personal computing era, died Feb. 15. He was 78.

The two chapters of Brainerd’s life feel quintessentially Seattle.

Brainerd made his fortune by founding Aldus Corp. as the personal computing revolution, led by companies including Microsoft and Apple, took hold. After Adobe acquired the desktop-publishing company, Brainerd turned himself and his money toward environmental conservation.

Born and raised in Medford, Ore., Brainerd received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon before completing his master’s degree in journalism at the University of Minnesota. He then landed a job at the Minneapolis Star Tribune as assistant operations director.

Though he left newspapering, Brainerd’s career didn’t stray from the world of publishing. After some time at publishing systems maker Atex, which was acquired by Kodak, Brainerd founded Aldus in 1984 and developed PageMaker, a software that could design professional page layouts on a desktop computer.

Launching PageMaker, Brainerd coined the term “desktop publishing.” PC users could create documents and publish content, a development credited with igniting the popularity of Apple’s Macintosh computer.

Ten years after Aldus’ founding, Brainerd sold the company to Adobe. Aldus and Adobe had essentially created the desktop publishing industry, which in 1994 was worth about $2 billion, The Seattle Times reported in 1994.

The acquisition, a $525 million deal in 1994, left Brainerd with about $120 million in Adobe stock. Instead of going back into the tech industry with a new idea, Brainerd turned his focus to conservation and philanthropy.

“I was at the meeting when Paul said he wanted to devote his next chapter, which ended up being the rest of his life, to conservation,” said Paul Brannick, employee No. 74 at Aldus. “He ended up influencing me in many ways.”

Brannick said Brainerd had high standards at Aldus and gave employees the room to either thrive or fall.

“He was supremely trusting of his staff,” said Ann Krumboltz, who was co-director of the environmental grantmaking organization the Brainerd Foundation, until it wound down in 2020.

“I had heard of his high standards when he asked me to work for him,” she said. “So I told him my concern, that he would try to micromanage me. He said ‘Anne, if you and the staff do the job you’re supposed to do, you won’t have to worry about my oversight.’ ”

Brainerd founded his namesake foundation in 1995. Two years later, he co-founded Social Venture Partners with a handful of others, including former Microsoft executives Scott Oki and Bill Neukom. The organization is a nonprofit that pools contributions from regular donors for philanthropic funds, using business as a model, The Seattle Times reported in 1999.

Brainerd and his wife, Debbi Brainerd, then founded IslandWood in 2000. The couple purchased more than 250 acres on Bainbridge Island and turned it into an environmental-focused children’s learning center.

“He was just so humble and truly wanted to make a difference,” said Krumboltz. “He cared about real impact and I think we all really admired that.”

Brainerd’s passion for conservation and the environment wasn’t born out of thin air, but rather learned from days spent outside and in the mountains as a kid. His sister, Sherry Brainerd, said when they were young, their family would load up from Medford and spend a fraction of each summer at a cabin in the Cascade Mountains.

“I’d thank our parents for instilling the love for nature in us,” Sherry Brainerd said. “We’d pass by clear-cut forests on the way to the cabin and I remember my folks saying ‘That’s just not right.’ ”

The siblings started the Brainerd Foundation together. Sherry Brainerd recalls her brother asking whether she’d like to join this conservation project he was starting. Though they had never worked together in business, she had no reservations. The two got more and more engaged in the process as time went on.

They’d bring grantees into the feedback process, focus their strategies on long-term policies that could bring real change, and eventually they exhausted the money.

At the beginning of the Brainerd Foundation, there was never a plan for it to eventually end. But it’s “one of those things that evolves over time,” Sherry Brainerd said.

Paul Brainerd was getting older and battling Parkinson’s disease and it seemed like a “good idea to maximize giving,” Sherry Brainerd said.

The Brainerd Foundation closed in 2020. As the organization was thinking of closing, Krumboltz said she would tell Brainerd about the legacy he and the foundation would leave.

“He would hate it when I said that, he’d say ‘Don’t use that word, legacy, it makes me so uncomfortable,’ ” Krumboltz said. “He was a very humble man.”

Brainerd is survived by his sister, Sherry, and his wife, Debbi. A celebration of life is planned in June at IslandWood.