DTP software ripens at 25!
anno 1985…

There is a little discussion going on over at the Linkedin Group called, “Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals“. Had to do with this post we did, “Quark caters Quickly to gap in service to printers left by Adobe“. Basically, those users that commented are fine with Adobe and it’s service level, even though many others, such as Frank Romano, who are a bit peeved at Adobe neglecting the market that formed DTP really. Then there was this neat little comment on that Linked in Group, which got me thinking about the interesting history of page layout applications and desktop publishing in general:

“Quark is the modern day Aldus!”
Quote by: Willie Soto Freelance Graphic Designer

If that is so, then the circle of Desktop Publishing (DTP) is near completion! Especially when you look at the history of this all important field…  Read more... (768 words, 4 images, estimated 3:04 mins reading time)

History of Desktop Publishing or DTP software -
Aldus, Adobe, Macromedia and Quark – 25 years in the making…
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• 1985 – Aldus Corp releases PageMaker for the Macintosh in July 1985, and relied on Adobe’s PostScript page description language.

“Content is free. Formats are not” is the article’s title from cnet. Now, this strays away from purely printing, although content in the digital printing world and certainly the publishing sector faces a similar fate:

“Content may be free, but the format in which we buy it certainly is not. As Apple, Google, Red Hat, and others increasingly demonstrate, consumers and enterprises are happy to pay for “free” when packaged in convenient formats that add value to digital goods.
….
All of these (re)purchases strike me that the media world may have problems, but they are mostly of discovering convenient formats in which to deliver content. Formats that suggest, and sometimes demand, payment.”
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Good content is a necessary precondition to getting paid, but it’s not going to be reason we pay anymore. That reason for payment is the format in which the content is delivered.
Perhaps it’s always been that way, but the physicality of the delivery mechanisms confused us: we were buying the paper but thought we were buying the news.”
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10369471-16.html  Read more... (348 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

The PRINT 09 show in Chicago a couple weeks ago is proof that many printers need to become more than just appliers of ink onto rolls of paper. The latest Fuji inkjet press or Xerox digital printing machine is of course important, yet we read in this article titled, “The Digital Future for the Printing Industry” that print-shops need to change or die. What is that change generally about?

“The printing industry is currently and will continue to experience many transitions in the form of `Digital Printing and Communications`. This also impacts on all businesses globally.

The printing industry will continue to evolve into new and exciting `electronic imaging driven by digital technology`. Digital technology, economic restructuring, global competition, market changes, emerging new media and other market forces are combining to `dramatically` change the operating environment of the Printing Industry.”
Source: http://www.graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=429

Here is a little video of T.J. Tedesco giving a 40,000 foot view of social media for printers at PRINT 09, which is for sure part of this transformation (Starting to sound like a Mayan 2012 prophecy!):
 Read more... (560 words, 1 image, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Here is an interesting piece from Dr. Joe of WhatTheyThink.com titled, “June 10 Economic Webinar Q&A.” This bit on the average number of employees at a printer and it’s potential relation to graphic designers taking on more of the role of prepress is what I wanted us to zoom in on here:

Q.  Is the average size of successful printing companies increasing or decreasing? Sales volume and or employee count as a measure.

A. Sales are down and our industry has a habit of calibrating itself by adding or shedding businesses as needed. The inflation-adjusted sales per employee is actually remarkably steady, which indicates this. The average size of a commercial printing business has been on a very slow decline for decades. It was around 26 employees in the late 1980s and was just above 19 by 2006. That says more about desktop publishing replacing prepress than it says about anything else.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/home/drjoe269.cfm  Read more... (460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)