At first glance, with his gentlemanly and humble demeanor, you wouldn't think the founder of Aldus Corp. was made of revolutionary fabric. But make no mistake: Brainerd changed the course of the computing world by bringing publishing technology to millions with the creation of PageMaker.

One thing is common among all revolutionary heroes: They believe one person can make a difference. It was when Brainerd was writing for his college newspaper and witnessed the fallout of the Vietnam War with its volatile protests and violent tear gas assaults on his peers that he locked on to this idea. "A person can in fact have an impact on the direction of an industry or a movement or the challenging of government, but it does take tools in today's world to make those things happen," says Brainerd.

To say Brainerd provided productivity tools to the industry is an understatement. Some, including former Apple Computer Inc. chief executive John Sculley in his book, credit Brainerd with providing Apple with the killer application the company needed to launch the Macintosh computer and LaserWriter printer as the premier graphical tools so many designers, developers and publishers rely on today.

"PageMaker was the app the Mac had been waiting for to give customers a reason to buy it," says Jeffrey Tarter, editor of SoftLetter, Watertown, Mass. "Without desktop publishing, the Mac probably would have followed the Lisa into oblivion and Bill Gates would have nothing to copy and we'd still be typing in at the C prompt. In a fundamental way, Paul Brainerd saved the universe."

Although that may seem slightly dramatic, industry executives say Brainerd did change the course of computing by providing a voice and free speech to those who otherwise would not have had a platform for expression.

"When you look at the effect of the combination of the Mac, PageMaker, LaserWriter and PostScript [by Adobe Systems Inc.], these products provided the enabling technology that started a revolution," says Heidi Roizen, who headed her own desktop publishing company and later worked as Apple's vice president of worldwide developer relations. "Newspapers started up in places where they didn't earlier have the ability--they were springing up in Eastern countries," she says.

Not everyone initially recognized this revolutionary software, however. When Brainerd first described his vision--which was referred to by Apple's Steve Jobs as "democratic publishing"--he was met with skepticism from the investment community.

Brainerd hit the venture capital pavement hard, getting the door closed in his face 48 times before he received the backing of two investment groups. But even then, he still had to put up $100,000 of his own money to seed the company--leaving him with just enough money to survive for two months in case he had to get another job, Brainerd says.

Revolutionaries never do plan too far in advance.

Despite the seed money, Aldus was still short several thousand dollars, Brainerd recalls, but never had to raise it because when the product started shipping, the company turned profitable within two short months. At the time of its launch in 1984, Brainerd ran Aldus alongside his team of four engineers out of a studio apartment in Seattle.

"I worked in the mornings on a business plan, raising money and conducting entrepreneurial activity, and the engineers worked on coding the prototype," which generated the PageMaker product the following summer, Brainerd says.

One of Aldus' early employees, Ted Johnson, then director of PageMaker development, recalls a frustrated and confused Brainerd stumbling back into the office one day after a meeting with Jobs. Jobs was trying to convince Brainerd to sell his software to the mass market at a low price vs. selling a high-end, half-million-dollar product to very select customers.

"It was a pretty daunting prospect. All his business plans were to sell his product for $500,000," says Johnson, now co-founder and executive vice president of Visio Corp., Seattle. "But he made the decision to go that way and vaulted into low-cost, high-volume production, but he was still nervous about changing Aldus' position."

The move represented a huge rewrite of Aldus' original mission, which was to provide software to display ad and makeup production for newspapers. Brainerd decided the newspaper industry's sales cycles were too long to fund his company, so he opted to sell his software to financial publications that needed graphics in their newsletters. But software aimed at such a vertical market would cost thousands of dollars. So Apple finally convinced Brainerd of the opportunities in selling to a broad market, although Brainerd did not want to sell quite as broadly as Jobs did.

It was Jobs' desire that all Macintosh software sell at a very low cost, Brainerd says. In fact, he asked Brainerd to price PageMaker at $99. Brainerd went back to his office, did the math and didn't see how he could possibly turn a profit with the number of Macs currently selling.

Instead, he priced his software at $495; wrapped it in slick packaging; rode the coattails of the Apple Macintosh advertising campaign, which promoted the Aldus product; went public with only 60,000 customers and made his millions; but, more importantly, Brainerd forever made his mark on the publishing world. His vision stemmed from his knowledge of newspaper production during his stint as a newspaperman early in his career. After writing for his college newspaper during the time of the Vietnam War, he received his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon and his masters in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

Brainerd worked in editorial posts at Minnesota and Oregon dailies, then went on to Atex Inc., where he served in executive positions before founding Aldus.

His good friend at the time, Jonathan Seybold, co-founder and chairman of Pretty Good Privacy, recalls the day Brainerd quit Atex, phoning Seybold to tell him about a disagreement he'd had with his superiors, who had wanted him to implement a plan to close down operations.

Instead of carrying out the orders, he quit. Seybold offered him a job, but Brainerd said he had to try his hand at the concept that became Aldus. So a month later Seybold arranged a meeting with Apple.

Brainerd also met with Adobe, which would later purchase Aldus. He describes the relationship among the three companies as "an excellent example of cooperation within the industry."

When Aldus finally did sell to Adobe, its sales were close to $250 million, it had 1,000 employees and an installed base of a half-million. Industry observers said the merger was perfect and the companies' technologies were extremely complementary because Adobe did not have a desktop publishing application to go with its PostScript printing language. Members of the venture capital community to this day walk up to Brainerd at public functions and say, "I was one of the guys who turned you down in the beginning--big mistake."

Brainerd just smiles. He is not considered by his peers to be vindictive. During his reign at Aldus he was known as a "gentleman," never bashing the competition.

"He once let it slip to me that his original intention with Aldus was to run with it for a couple years, sell it, and then move on to something else like his environmental work," remembers Charlie Jackson, founder of Silicon Beach Software, which was bought by Aldus. "But when you take a company public, you have a certain obligation morally, not necessarily legally."

Brainerd's close colleagues say he stayed with the company as long as he thought was right, which happened to be when Adobe purchased it in 1994. He then quietly slipped away from high-tech industry life but stayed on Adobe's board for a while.

Brainerd now has other industries to focus on--fishing, wildlife, forests and rivers around the Pacific Northwest. The once-high-flying executive returned to his boyhood roots and the land he and his family had visited on summer vacations and formed the Brainerd Foundation.

The foundation distributes funds to groups working to protect the environment in Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

It is being financed by one-third of the money Brainerd made when he sold Aldus, distributing $1.4 million each year to certain conservation agencies. And he is taking the same personal hands-on approach that he took with Aldus.