The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe, together with Aldus.

[1] The basis of early versions of the Adobe Illustrator Artwork file format is formed by EPS together with the DSC Open Structuring Conventions.

EPS files frequently include a preview picture of the content for on-screen display.

These machines could not directly render the PostScript, which presented Adobe with the dilemma of how to provide a preview image for the designer while also including the PS version for the printer.

When faced with the same problems on Microsoft Windows-based versions of their programs, Adobe chose to instead add a TIFF file encoded into the header section of the PostScript.