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Here are assorted images of Studio Software's disks and software. find a 100% match on the font. The labels on the actual floppies were this sort of odd pale maroon color, at least through the DO-IT era. Once FrontPage took over they became far less interesting looking, switching to a boring printed "FrontPage". Studio Software really were ahead of their time, given how modern branding works.

Speed/Art

Where it all started. This is a single page designer/editor, at least in theory. The only working copy that survived is a severely feature-limited demo. There are more fully featured copies in the source code, but I couldn't get any of them to run.

MDA mode

This is what you see if you load the software under an MDA card (rendered here with an amber monitor, as all MDA cards should be). The software is utterly broken at runtime, with most of the screen simply missing. Maybe this wasn't done yet?

Regular CGA mode

You might think that answering "no" to "Do you have a Plantronics Color Board?" meant "use CGA". You'd be wrong, it's specifically "B&W". MDA mode on CGA looks weird, with everything being cyan, but "Plantronics mode" on CGA just looks terrible, dark blue on black is not very readable.

Plantronics Colorplus mode

And this is what you see if you actually did have a Colorplus card. The software has issues clearing the cursor as you move it around the screen, resulting in ghosted cursors everywhere. But it does work, and the color scheme is honestly kind of neat, at least to me.

Disk

This is the disk with the one working demo on it. Note the date on the disk label predates the date of the files on it by a year. Apologies for the label being difficult to read, time wasn't kind to this disk's label.

DO-IT Beta 1.2

The earliest "working" build, or at least complete. This version exits on startup complaining of a "tainted" data file. Despite having several other disks from around this era, I could not find one that would allow this version to load. But you can see the reference to the <--' button, as well as that it was using GSX and that the company name was already Studio Software (but oddly, missing the "Corporation").

Software

This is what you see when you try (and fail) to run DO-IT Beta 1.2.

Disk

This is what the disks holding this beta look like.

DO-IT 1.02

The earliest actually working build, now with installer to copy files to your hard drive.

Installer

This is what you see running the installer, in its entirety, at least when everything works. There's a couple other screens you'll see if you fail some requirements. I just think it's neat.

And once you see how the seemingly identical screens actually aren't you'll be furious.

Software

This is what you see running 1.02. Unlike Beta 1.2 this version actually works, save I've never been able to coax it into using a mouse. You can navigate with the arrow keys though, so it is usable, just not exactly enjoyable.

Disk

This is what the disks containing 1.02 looked like (developer's name redacted):

There were others that had just the right-side "DO-IT" label, which I assume is what actual commercial distribution would have looked like. Likewise, this is a sleeve containing a random printer driver disk, which I assume would have been the sleeve the software was sold in. Unfortunately the glossy black material doesn't play well with my cheap lightbox rig.

DRAW

An internal tool, I believe used to draw fonts. No disk photo is available as DRAW was recovered from source code only.

Software

DRAW is... not in a good way. Every message it prints is preceded by control codes that I do not know the purpose of. I don't know if this was halfway through a major upgrade or what, but this is the only copy I have, so it is what it is. It does load to an editor screen, but I think it's expecting some kind of tablet input device that I definitely do not have. You can change the color at least.

FrontPage Demo

The demo that shipped ahead of FrontPage, showing how to use the software. I highly recommend checking out the demo from the disk on Archive (linked in the navigation above)--it's positively charming. Also shown is the splash screen for the DO-IT 2.0 demo just to show how little changed.

Disk

This is the disk the demo came on. While I think the angled DO-IT is a more memorable logo, it's at least not just pure text like all modern logos are.

FrontPage

Studio Software's final product.

Software

Very similar to DO-IT 1.02 above, except for the new Help system and some new tools.

Disk

Effectively identical to the demo disk, but included for completeness.

Publicity

The following were very kindly provided to me by the fine folks at the Computer History Museum when I inquired about their sole Studio Software Corporation entry. Go check them out!

All captions were as they were documented at CHM; the final image did not come with a caption. The title cased "Do-It" rather than SSC's all caps branding is original to that caption.

Studio Software's DO-IT software bridges the gap between the IBM PC family and Apple Corp.'s Apple LaserWriter

FrontPage from Studio Software

A screen shot of Studio Software's Do-It page layout program.

(no caption provided)