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History of Clipart

Clip art illustrates virtually every medium in the modern graphic arts. Whether paid or free, clip art has become the stock in trade of both amateur and professional desktop publishing. Originally, clip art received its name from the production process. Design teams would build scale models of a given layout as a “paste up”—that is, a larger version of the layout that would eventually be printed. The team photographed the paste up and used the negative to create the actual printing plate; however, previous to this, the paste up needed some pasting up. That is where the clip art came in.

Whenever the layout editor needed a graphic for the paste up, two options were available: produce it or find it. In both cases, the graphic was located separately before being cut out or “clipped” to fit the space on the paste up. This clip art procedure carried over to the introduction of the first desktop computers with VCN Execuvision developing a professionally-drawn digital clipart library in 1983. Throughout the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, the popularity of clipart grew to fill the increasing need made by the rise of desktop publishing. Soon, gone were the days of physical camera-ready paste ups—though, as with clipart, the term persisted—and in came the days of Illustrator, PageMaker, Publisher, and more.

Of course, clip art is intellectual property. As the areas of distribution spread—especially with the advent of the CD-ROM in the early 1990s—clip art needed a solution to maintain its accessibility without losing usefulness. Clipart’s focus started to aim more for quantity over quality in 1995 as T/Maker introduced a 500,000-image copyright-free library. Because the industry relaxed its high quality standards of clipart, copyright became less of a concern as clipart creators became more willing to part with their art. In 1996, for example, Microsoft Word 6.0 offered clipart files as part of its program suite.

Modern clipart sprawls itself across the web, whether as decoration for a website or as actual web content. Image and graphics libraries seem to spring up as readily as weeds in the summer, ranging from lower-end groupings of images to high-quality, high-volume clipart libraries. Stock photography has also started to come into vogue as an alternative to clipart, which is usually illustrated by hand or computer. Of the several ways that clipart can be accessed, clipart in the public domain—where the creator has divested her or himself of all copyright and donated the art away—tends to be the most popular. An interesting problem arises, however, whenever clipart in the public domain is downloaded and edited. Technically, a person who edits clipart creates his or her own copyright for it. More and more, though, courts and laws are working to help facilitate the easy spread of clipart while preserving the rights of those who want to hold on to it. Generally, image copyright gets its lease royalty-free so that clipart users can tackle their project with one payment and no worries. Of course, free clipart still bounces around online and is often a viable alternative. All the way from pencils and paste ups to photos and desktop publishing, clipart makes its mark in the arts.

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From fourth-grade science projects to flyers for the neighborhood block party, we have just the free graphics for your job.
Do you remember that book report you had to do in the third grade? The one with the hand drawings quickly scribbled in the margins? We do, too. (Not yours, but ours.) We remember the kid who sat next to you whose parents had access to all of the cool clipart. Kids like that had the reports made on a laser printer, bound in shiny clear plastic folders, and sparkling with cool graphics. Clip art should never be so far away. In a world that grows increasingly visual, you, your friends, your children, and your neighbors all need the benefit of a helpful graphic to catch attention and stick the message in their memory.

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 Fast forward with us a few years. We’re at your first party in college, now. Word of mouth worked great—if you wanted the same ten people. The neighboring apartment made flyers and put them up in all the places that they weren’t supposed to and fifty people crashed their place the night after your modest little shindig. What’s the difference between these two stories? They did something to stick in people’s memories. You didn’t. Don’t worry—these things happen! There’s plenty of time to change your ways, and our free clip art is in place to help. Don’t let the next big event in your life pass the world by in lines of black on sheets of white. Find the perfect clip art and make your words sparkle!

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At Universalclipart.com, some of our free graphics and clip art include:

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