Adobe Reveals New Branding for InDesign and the Creative Cloud

InDesignSecrets Team

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[Editor’s note: This was our 2013 April Fool’s Post]

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) is on a roll. After a rocky beginning introducing their new subscription-based “Creative Cloud” in 2012, Adobe’s Creative Cloud service is now a resounding success, with over a half-million paid, individual subscribers worldwide.

Realizing that its future is all in the cloud, Adobe has decided to rename all of its major apps after cloud formations. As Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen explained in a press event this morning, “Classic product names like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, though certainly well-known, simply don’t match up with our current worldview of products in the Creative Cloud. To that end, we’re very proud to announce the new Cloud names for our Creative Suite products, official as of today.”

Senior management followed Narayen on the stage, each one taking his or her turn at introducing a product’s new name, acronym and splash screen; some of which are shown here.

Adobe Photoshop is now: Adobe Altocumulus Lenticularis Duplicatus® (ALD). “What’s our 500-lb gorilla app?,” asked Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Media David Wadhwani. “Photoshop, of course! And the Altocumulus Lenticularis Duplicatus is seriously one big daddy cloud!” As everyone knows, ALD is a cloud formation that is an indicator of limited convective instability at the altitude of its formation from 6,500 to about 23,000 ft (2 to 7 km) in temperate latitudes.

Next, Winston Hendrickson, vice president Creative Media Solutions, came on stage to announce that Adobe Illustrator will now be called Adobe Cumulus Mediocris Pileus® (CMP). He cautioned industry analysts in the audience not to take the “Mediocris” part of the name literally: “It signifies how Illustrator is positively positioned in the user mindset: a moderate, well-balanced blend of power and control for digital illustrators.” He then played a video of himself in a glider moving quickly through an aptly named cloud of moderate vertical development which is the product of free convective airmass instability.

Ebullient cheers accompanied Chris Kitchener, Adobe’s Group Product Manager for the Design Segment, as he excitedly bounded up to the stage. Rubbing his hands with glee, Kitchener turned around, pressed his presentation remote, and raised both arms triumphantly at the slide projection of the new branding and naming for our well-loved Adobe InDesign:

“And, from this day forward,” he announced using his best attempt at an English accent, “Adobe InDesign will be dubbed Adobe Cirrus Fibratus Radiatus® (CFR)!” Clearly, Kitchener believes that his favorite application, CFR, named after a cloud formation that has a distinctive rolled or rippled appearance due to limited convective instability, formed when moist air at high tropospheric altitude reaches saturation, creating ice crystals, scored the best cloud name out of all of the Cloud apps. “Look at those dynamic radia,” he exclaimed, “they’re fibratting all around, arrayed like spokes around an unseen hub! Just as InDesign is the hub application for all things that will be published, in print, PDF, ebook and tablet form. One look at CFR and you know it’s Adobe’s layout program.”

For more new product names and complete coverage of today’s press event, visit Adobe’s “Creative Cloud World Domination” web page.

Of similar interest:

• Adobe InDesign CSVI Ships
• Adobe InDesign Released for iPad, iPhone, and iOS
• InDesign CS5: Every Feature Revealed In Amazing April 1 Scoop!
• News: InDesign Drops Support for Print Publishing