David Blatner, a consultant and author on desktop publishing, calls it like he sees it in his keynote address at Adobe Systems' InDesign Conference.SAN FRANCISCO—There was no question about the message graphic-arts consultant David Blatner was sending to the attendees of the
InDesign Conference at the Hotel Nikko on Wednesday. QuarkXPress is old and tired, and Adobe Systems' InDesign CS2 is the future of desktop publishing.
"I used to be a die-hard Quark user," Blatner told the crowd of about 180 attendees at his keynote speech. "We have seen the most technological advances in five years in page layout than the previous 10 years. Some companies have been leading the way, some have been keeping up and some, well, just haven't done anything. All the innovation that we've seen, and Quark hasn't done anything with them. Adobe has."
Blatner, who doesn't work for Adobe, is a consultant specializing in InDesign, QuarkXPress and Photoshop. He has authored or co-authored 13 books, including "Real-World Adobe InDesign," "InDesign for QuarkXPress Users," the award-winning bestseller "The QuarkXPress Book," "Real-World Photoshop," "Real-World Scanning and Halftoning," and "QuarkXPress Tips & Tricks."
Blatner covered the history of InDesign, starting with versions 1.0 and 2.0 and how it started changing his way of thinking about QuarkXPress.
"I was all excited about Quark introducing tables to QuarkXPress," Blatner said. "Then I saw InDesign 2.0 and thought, 'Quark sucks.'"
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He also covered who the audience was by a show of hands to various questions. The audience was made up of mostly Mac users with about a quarter working on both Mac and Windows machines.
A majority of the audience had used QuarkXPress but was looking to move to InDesign, and almost everyone in the room had been doing desktop publishing "since the dawn of time," as Blatner phrased the question.
The next incarnation was InDesign CS, and Blatner said he was finally sold completely. "It moved from really good software to 'Duh, what are you going to use.' It was completely obvious what you should be using for desktop publishing."
Blatner went on to show what he considered to be the coolest new features of InDesign CS2. His top five features are:
PDF/PSD layers
Adobe Bridge
Object Styles
Anchored Objects
Footnotes
"I am utterly fascinated that a majority of people still use QuarkXPress," Blatner said. "InDesign is just leagues better than Quark."
But five features weren't enough, so Blatner then talked about his "pretty cool 10":
Quick Apply
Drag and Drop Text
MS Word Import Improvements
InDesign Snippets
New InCopy Workflow (assignments)
Transform Again
Save back to CS1
Improved XML features
PageMaker Plug-in stuff
Frame-based Baseline Grid
Blatner got a laugh when he described Adobe's Photoshop as basically just an InDesign CS2 plug-in.
"There are a lot of users that are using CS2, but they're using it the same way they did QuarkXPress or PageMaker," Blatner said. "You need to learn new workflows for you to get the most out of CS2, like PDF/PSD layers."
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For people such as Diane Abbott and Ginger Burch, both from the Bloomington, Ill., State Farm Insurance office, attending these conferences just helps them do a better job. Both work as forms designer analysts and, as Abbott said, "Our department is just growing so much, it's important for us to keep up with the latest features to improve our workflow." Both attended an InDesign Conference in Florida last year and felt they got a lot of the breakout sessions.
Blatner pointed out that many of the new features of CS2 really automate the production process, saving lots of time for users. He also encouraged the attendees to make their own wish lists for the next version of InDesign.
"I have like a five-page, single-spaced list of things I want," Blatner said. "Things like being able to import Adobe Acrobat annotations. I use PDFs for everything, and that's a feature I'd really like. But make your own list because on Friday, folks from Adobe will be here and they'll listen to what you want. They really want to know what you want."
The audience asked questions as Blatner went through many of the new features at a high level. He also encouraged people to join or even begin their own InDesign user groups.
"I think one of the most impressive things about the InDesign world is there is so much interaction. There's a magazine, user groups, these conferences. There's just so much buzz around InDesign," Blatner said. "This is a fun place to be. People are excited."
Doug Knight is excited. He just landed the job of running the yearbooks for Harker School in San Jose, and he has to get up to speed fast.
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"We have a lot of tech-savvy students, and they've been using InDesign forever to produce their yearbooks at the high school," Knight said. "This is the first year the middle school will be doing it, and I want to be able to help out these students who already know a lot on how to use the more sophisticated tools."
Knight hasn't been doing desktop publishing other than having "ancient PageMaker experience," but he said he hopes the conference will give him the key tips to take back home.
"It's nice being with all these experienced users and hearing their concerns," Knight said. "I'm really benefiting."
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