July 1 officially marks Data Designs Publishing’s 25th anniversary!
Yes, we started desktop publishing when the industry was still in its infancy…
1985 – Aldus Corporation released PageMaker on the Macintosh. It used Adobe’s PostScript page description language. (Aldus and Adobe merged in 1994.)
1986 – Aldus released PageMaker for the PC.
1986 – Ventura Publisher released. It later became Xerox Ventura Publisher and then Corel Ventura.
1987 – Quark released QuarkXPress.
1987 – Adobe released Adobe Illustrator.
1988 – Data Designs entered the desktop publishing world. We, of course, were the only major desktop publishing milestone in 1988 – at least the most significant one! We opened our doors with a state of the art PostScript laser printer, two powerful (by 1988 standards) PCs, and a couple of copies of Ventura Publisher software. We had a couple of years of desktop publishing experience under our belt working for a non-profit organization in Chicago before we decided to make it our full-time career.
Since we stepped into the industry we’ve seen the introduction of CorelDRAW (1989), Adobe Photoshop (1990), FreeHand (1990), Acrobat and the PDF file format (1993) and Adobe InDesign (1999).
We’ve been using the major desktop publishing programs since their infancy. We started using:
- Ventura Publisher when it was version 2.0 – it came on twenty-one 360K floppy drives, installing a program that was mind-boggling 4.49MB.
- Aldus PageMaker when it was version 3.1. (We went to it reluctantly, believing it to be a downgrade from Ventura.)
- CorelDRAW, Photoshop, Acrobat and InDesign when each was version 1.0.
There were other programs along the way, and tremendous changes in the industry. Of course the greatest changes are being made today with cloud and mobile computing.
Over the 25 years we’ve operated out of four home offices and enjoyed working with many employees, but two require special recognition:
Donna Smeal served as our office manager for 13 years. Our move to Norwalk in 2005 made it too long of a commute for her to continue with us. Besides, she had a growing cruise travel business that has since blossomed. If you ever – ever – want (or need) to take a cruise, she’s the best agent you’ll ever find. Check out her website here. (For those of you who have never cruised, we find it to be the most relaxing, most affordable, and most fun vacation available. Unpack once and let the ship take you to exotic locations while lavishing you with great food and entertaining you with shows, dancing, games, and relaxing deck chairs.)
Charlotte Tuttle holds the employee longevity record, having been with us for 14 years. She has served us and our clients invaluably as a desktop publisher and account manager during that time. We are so very thankful for her talent, friendship, and faithful service. Whenever Donna sends us on a cruise (which isn’t nearly often enough), you’re likely to be speaking to Charlotte while we’re gone. She is abundantly capable of handling everything in our absence.
What will the next 25 years bring? Changes happen so quickly in the publishing industry that I doubt anyone has a clue. For now, we’re celebrating the previous quarter century.
Happy 25th anniversary, Data Designs Publishing!
Watch for our our e-newsletter, The Alpha Channel, for a special rate in July in honor of our 25th anniversary.
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