Adobe Launches Happy Birthday InDesign Site and Book!
We have a saying in my family: A belated birthday card, gift, or call is wonderful because it stretches the birthday celebration out farther! So, in the spirit of extending the party, Adobe has launched indesign10anniversary.com, a wonderful site to promote 10 years of InDesign!
The coolest part of the site is a 78-page eBook PDF called Page by Page (free download!) written by our friend Pamela Pfiffner. (Some of you may recall that she was the original editor of InDesign Magazine, as well as editor in chief of a number of other magazines, including MacUser and Publish.)
There are also some videos (including one by me, mentioned in another blog post; more to be released each week for a while), an interactive timeline, and a big push to download the free trial, buy InDesign, or upgrade. I can see why the push is there (it is Adobe’s product to sell, after all) but I do find it kind of amusing, because if you’re interested in the site, you probably already own it!
Nevertheless, we applaud Adobe for their fun site, awesome free book, and — most of all — our favorite layout program. Here’s to 10 more years of excellence!
The blond babe in the History of ID book, isn’t that Anne-Marie 10 years ago?
LOL, Theun! Which blonde are you referring to? The guy on the magazine cover on page 57 is me before I had that thing removed from my ear.
Why are the pictures soooooo downsampled?
Some of the samples are so fuzzy and pixelated, they remind me of a cheap fleece blanket washed and rewashed since InDesign was in beta.
I love your point about stretching out the celebration! Indeed, Pam’s book is real treat and quite a walk down memory lane.
The one thing that stands out is the mention of the first NYC InDesign User Group. The first meeting was actually scheduled for September 12, 2001.
Obviously, that meeting didn’t take place that day but once rescheduled had only a handful of attendees and met in a classroom. I can remember those early meetings with curious Quark users questioning whether the transparency effects in ID 2.0 would actually print.
Luckily Sandee Cohen was there to clear that point up in hurry.
Our favorite page layout application has certainly come a long way since then and I for one am looking forward to whatever magic Adobe comes up with next!
David, was that picture from the time you were assimilated by the Borg? “Wired” indeed!
Pp. 15, 28 (back?), 42, and 48
Jongware, you crack me up.
The page break between page 11 and page 12 in the paragraph titled “Modern Architecture” is a pain in the rear
However, it was a pleasure to read the book and think about the big changes in the publishing business within the last ten years.
I’ve been using and loving Adobe InDesign since version 1.0.
A free german translation of your post, David, is published here: http://blog.smi.ch/2010/03/10/adobe-indesign-wurde-zehn : Hope, this is ok! It’s for the birthday child!
No problem, Jochen! Vielen dank!
thanks to Jochen F. Uebel…….
I just happen to love this stuff.
I’m pleased to have several pieces displayed in the book, but disappointed by the image quality. Guess they decided to down sample all bitmaps to conserve file size. Or to encourage book sales?
Love the new book but agree there should be an option to download a higher-res version.
@azabache and @scott and @Leigh: I figured the resolution was: a) to keep file size down; b) perhaps for permissions reasons?; c) because they want people to buy the printed book — assuming there will be a printed book. I hope so! I want one! Although it’s not in 8-pg sigs… so perhaps they won’t? Hm.
According to this Adobe blog, there will be a limited edition print run of the book in April!
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/03/adobe_indesign_celebrates_its.html
Personally I’d like to get my hands on the original ID file and fix some text composition and layout issues, then re-export to PDF. Some strangeness going on in that thing. (Did anyone else notice some pages have no hyphenation, others do?)
It’s curious to me how this version of the book could have been signed off as final. Ah well. The actual content is wonderful, another great job by Pamela!
It’s a good, historical read — all hats off to Pamela Piffner! Her book on Adobe is a great read, too — highly recommended.
I have reasons to celebrate these days, too: in the spring of 1990 I began using QuarkXPress. I became reasonably adpet at it (I always viewed PageMaker as a school-and-office tool) — and stayed on that rocky XPressway until the spring of 2000, when I took a sharp right turn and sidegraded (for $300, I think) to InDesign 1.5. It was a bit rough in places, yes, but I loved it from the start nevertheless. I have upgraded to *every* new version since then. And here we are ten years later, with a new version due out this spring — and I’m looking mightily forward to learning more about it. And yes, chances are good I will once again be lured into upgrading.
Happy Birthday, InDesign!