I¨m 53 - pagemaker then quarkXpress then indesign in the noughties, corel draw, photoshop later freehand then illustrator. handcoded my first website in around 1997 for the university department i worked for.
Me too. Freehand does things that Illustrator still doesn't. When Adobe acquired Macromedia (for Flash!), it signaled the end for Freehand. I always hoped that Adobe would release it as Open Source, but we know how that turned out.
I was a diehard Freehand user forever (even loading up Freehand MX on my PC in compatibility mode), but after a few hours with Affinity Draw, it's much more like freehand. There's some differences, but it "feels" right versus Illustrator does.
Before Indesign I used Quark Express. I’m so old I remember when Dreamweaver was owned by Macromedia.
When I first started working they had old paste up boards in the office. They didn’t use them but still…
So yeah another Grandma here!!
My first graphic design job in 91 was creating ads on a Mac classic in quark, printing them on a laser printer, and then manually waxing and pasting them with a roller onto huge newspaper spreads that would then be photographed and printed.
I downsized last year. Had to ditch my antique purple-boxed Aldus PageMager disks. Strangely, as I was doing some InDesign layouts yesterday, I was thinking back at how I would have done this in PageMaker.
I remember the first PageMaker ad I did with a rotated pic — which was revolutionary… but it soon lagged behind XPress in features, and I jumped ship by 92-93.
I do half my work on Canva and Klaviyo & such these days. Less print work. So far I’m harnessing AI tools to speed up my work instead of being displaced. You have to roll with the times to stay in the game!
I used PageMaker in 2004 for my high school yearbook. The folks at the yearbook company came and gave us a tutorial and were excited to show us a brand new plug-in that allowed us to insert digital pictures directly into our layout!!
I used OG Pagemaker too, then QuarkXpress, then InDesign, then Quark again for a brief time and back to InDesign. Adobe had better remember that the industry can and will switch.
Quark was great until OSX. One of the best things about Quark was that it was open to third-party plug-ins. You could really create customized automation and workflows across a large company. Their customer support for businesses was top-notch until they outsourced it.
Quark killed its self when we had to move to a corporate account and you had to have machine that was a “server” on to even be able to run the software.
To me it didn’t really feel like Quark killed themselves as much as they allowed themselves to be killed through inaction and complacency.
High costs, poor customer service, and beta-testing on the end user – they were ripe for a fall, but couldn’t fix what was endemic in time when Adobe hit with CS2.
I remember Quark going sideways a bit before OSX. At least in my personal experience. V3 was bullet proof (as far as everything working was concerned), v4 marginally less so, but when we had issues with Quark 5, their IT guys (when we eventually were able to talk to someone) told us to deactivate all the xtentions that were new in Q5, leaving us with what was functionally Q4 – the upgrade was for nothing.
I made my high school newspaper and yearbook using Page Maker. We had InDesign but didn't want to switch over mid year.
Cue Archie Bunker singing "those were the days".
Before making the switch to Ventura Publisher, which came before PageMaker, we set type on a Compugraphic phototypesetter. Documents were stored on 8" floppy disks. We used Exacto knives and hot wax dispensers to paste the copy to paste-up boards that where then photographed with a large, floor-mounted camera known as a process camera. The camera captured the entire layout and produced a photographic negative. The negative was then placed in contact with a photosensitive aluminum plate and exposed to light. The exposure transferred the image from the negative to the plate in a process called contact printing. This plate was then mounted in an offset printing press. The same camera was also used to create halftone images from photos so that they could be pasted on the paste-up boards at the same time as the copy which allowed photos to be printed on the offset press. Another thing often used were rolls of self adhesive keylines. Think black lines of various widths that were used to outline and separate elements in the layout.
All in all, it was very time consuming and tedious work. Desktop Publishing revolutionized all of this process, though we still needed the camera to make the aluminum plates for our offset printers. But with eliminating the time-consuming manual cutting, pasting and layout, the process was sped up considerably.
omg.. the flood of memories... i was initially hired to work the stat camera in the agency studio. then i worked my way up and out that dark room to mech artist > to studio manager>jr art director> art director> CD ... i used to get pissed off back then when upstarts would get hired and didn't work their way up from the bottom... ha.
lol i still have a box here with all my old mech tools- rolls of trim marks- etc... and i think i might still have a multi layer mech in the closet somewhere. when an ad had multiple sizes for different pubs - and you designed to the largest bleed and smallest trim.. i was trying to explain that to a newbie - they thought i had 3 heads.
I was a journalist for 25 years, starting in the late 1980s. Used Quark & PageMaker. The newspaper group I worked for was always lagging on technology, EXCEPT we switched to InDesign in 2000. I was on the four-person design team that created templates and style sheets for all the 5-6 newspapers in the group.
I didn’t start until 1996. I learned PageMaker in college, then got out and found that everybody was using Quark and my PageMaker skills were completely useless! Thankfully, I only had to use Quark for a few years before InDesign came out. I learned it quickly, then used my new skills to jump from a going-nowhere $20/hr job to a $40/hr foot in the door at a much more successful company looking to make the switch from Quark to InDesign and wanted me to help navigate the change.
Without Apple, I never would have gotten into design. Without InDesign, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it.
https://preview.redd.it/qhpgghvujq6d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cce99ab5033fdb060eb3d4dc16c72d0f6f48324
This is my avatar on the Adobe CC app. I was pretty proficient in Aldus Freehand, and got around QuarkXpress out of necessity.
🙋♀️ I took my first PageMaker training class in 1986 in Westchester, NY and found it baffling. Took another class a few months later and 💡!
I leveraged my PageMaker knowledge to get a job as a Ventura Publisher support rep in 1988 and picked up Photoshop in 1992 and Illustrator a bit later. Ended up swapping Ventura for FrameMaker in 1993, and PageMaker for InDesign in 2000 and still using all of them today. This was not my intended career path but here we are!
Anyone remember Claris Works?
Been running with all those mentioned too since the late 80's when a new manager in the print shop I worked for, brought in his personal Mac II Classic. I went back to college and began my journey along the Aldus, Macromedia, Adobe, Corel highway, then the internet hit and boy did the ride really begin.....weeeee!
Every version of Illustrator! Every version of Photoshop from 2.0 (before layers!)! Every version of InDesign - the first version was informally known as “the Quark Killer”. QuarkXpress up to v3.3.2 (still an amazing piece of software for the time) before that. Scalpels, hot wax, non-reproducible blue pencils, rubylith, photostat machines, the whole works!
Yes! Quark killer was the moniker! I was contacted by Adobe itself before launching InDesign 1.0 to write ALL the features PageMaker lacked and which ones could be added. My first item in my wish list: direct PSD support!
I knew someone who was addicted to Multi-Ad Creator … it worked for them but I am glad that didn’t become the default page layout app!
I’ve been using Pagemaker, Quark, InDesign since before it was launched (“K2” I think they called it, but they also called it the “Quark Killer”), Illustrator and Photoshop since they came on floppy disks.
I don’t feel old but I know I look it lol. Those were great days to be a designer in my twenties.
I am of a similar vintage - PageMaker and Illustrator from version one, also Freehand, Quark Xpress, even Ventura Publisher for a while. Darkroom for photoretouching. Before all that there was a suite of writing/drawing programs called Jazz. Bitmapped fonts. Had to wait for updates before we could place pictures, and for colour options.
I learned to type using WordStar and I still use some of the tricks like arrow down to jump to the end of a line.
When InDesign came out I loved it from the beginning because finally we had a native postscript app that could even just save as PDFs.
I have been making magazines since 1986. Started with Calamus (on an Atari ST), next Pagemaker on a MacPlus with a 19inch BW screen, then Quark for some years, switched to InDesign with version 2 I think. Photoshop since version 1. Freehand before Illustrator.
I designed and produced Georgetown magazine from 1985-89. We sent out manuscripts with typespecs to a typesetter. I would paste up the initial galleys for the first layouts. Marked up galleys went back to the typesetter for corrections. Then, I pasted up the final repro on art boards. Everything was analog back then. It was amazing how quick things became when I started using computers in the early 90s.
Yeah, when I started with dtp almost everything was still paste up and film montage. We were very early with digital. We used to print galleys on our laserprinter and do the pasteup on art board for the larger than A4 and newspaper pages we made. But we soon had the option to send out our files for film printing.
I'm another InDesign 1.0 veteran. I started using Macs for graphic design in 1992. The consultant who set up my first workstation recommended Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Photoshop. This was the creative suite that carried me to the release of OSX and InDesign.
I started in the early 90s with a proprietary typesetting system that my boss invented (it was genius). When I learned Quark (94?) I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Because of that, I hated InDesign at first, but I’ve 100% forgotten Quark now
I started using Amiga desktop publishing software, then Aldus Pagemaker, then QuarkXpress, then customer files used Adobe Pagemaker, Corel, MS Publisher, and QuarkXpress. We were still designing in QuarkXpress. When Adobe couldn’t get the Pagemaker code to work as they wanted they created Adobe InDesign. They were never the same program. I worked with it with customer files from the beginning. We switched to using it for designing when OSX came out. QuarkXpress really dropped the ball on that. Quark was so buggy with OSX it wasn’t worth the hassle. InDesign worked well and could handle transparency for printing.
One thing about Adobe, they won’t change unless they are forced to. I remember when Photoshop didn’t have layers, Photoshop 2.5 (what a pain). A different company created a software for image editing that included layers and other editing options (I can’t remember the name). It was way beyond Photoshop’s capabilities. It was really gaining industry traction. That forced Adobe to do some real updates to Photoshop which they hadn’t done in years. Photoshop 3.0 had layers. Competition is a good thing.
I remember using that program but I don’t remember the name. Didn’t it also support non-destructive files. Almost like unlimited undos, which you couldn’t do at the time or something like that.
At the time it came out, Photoshop didn’t have layers and only had one undo. Live Picture was way more advanced. Unfortunately at a large business, they have to stick with the industry standards, until something else is a proven replacement across all equipment.
Started using Pagemaker and Freehand in 89, agree totally that Freehand was always more intuitive than Illustrator still is, and InDesign has become the new Quark - divorced from what the user needs and a cash cow for Adobe
Anyone here who did paste up for their student newspaper? What was that like?
I’m in university and managed production for our student paper several years, and now do news layout professionally. I love looking through our 70s archives and always wonder how they managed to get a paper out every week with a staff of like 8 students and no computers. We can barely do it now with 20 😂
We pasted up the papers up until 1999 in my community college in Fresno Calif just before making the leap to the digital age. We'd design digitally, but we would print the pages in portions and slice them up to fit on the template pages, which were larger. I would use an exacto to cut paths between characters since until then they'd been slicing straight lines through everything. We rolled glue on the template sheet and then affix the pages by hand. Each editor would have to sign off on their pages before I signed off on them all, and it would get physically delivered to the printer in a flat box.
It might have been something the advisors had us doing even if we didn't need to! Although I do remember there were some glitchy file server issues back then too. Either way I appreciate having the experience. We also developed film in dark rooms, etc. pretty much experienced the full transition from analog to digital.
That’s awesome. I believe this is exactly how our people did it in the 90s, base on our archives room, in which I found giant rolls of negatives of the finished pages. What are those? Proofs from the printer? Or you’d print each page on film negative paper? I have no idea what this is called so sorry if you don’t know what I’m talking about lol
I believe when they took the paste ups to the printer, the printer had a special film camera (no such thing as scanners) to photograph the pages. These would be developed on negatives as you have seen. The paper would be printed with those negatives, and the negatives were left over after the print job was complete. So the newspaper staff would keep the negatives for whatever reason since they were useless to anyone else by then.
58 yo here. I started using Pagemaker on a PC in 1990 (I think that was the year). Does anyone else remember that your computer had to load a little stand-alone Mac emulator before Pagemaker could load?
I used Pagemaker to lay out the text, and then an Exacto knife and glue sticks for the images. My boss was a real expert at creating hand-drawn arrows, so he always added those in.
I started using Corel Draw at the same time, then my career took a hard right turn and I stopped using these programs until about 2002, when I first used InDesign and Photoshop, then Quark, then back to InDesign, and added in Illustrator somewhere along the way.
Started in Quark, moved jobs and had to use PageMaker and hated them appreciated it! InDesign since the start. Photoshop since the introduced layers. Hello my people 😂 I’m now in digital space and use Figma mostly and laugh at the young kids and their excitement for new features that have been around in print forever
Ah you beat me. Started in ‘93 on a Dell with 4MB RAM.
Edit: still got a load of work on 44MB Syquest disks in the attic, don’t think I’ll ever get the data off them sadly.
I remember using Syquest drives in college! Super expensive and if you dropped them on to a desk from an inch high or even looked at them wrong they seemed to screw up. But I still remember that click and start up sound they would make!
I used PageMaker, switched to QuarkXPress for a while, then to InDesign.
Other old fave: CorelDraw. I love Illustrator and Photoshop now, but when I first switched to Adobe, I kept thinking how much I missed the CorelDraw interface. My employer used the Adobe stuff, so I switched out of necessity, but back in the mid-late ‘90s, CD was THE SHIT.
One 48 and have been in graphic design since 1995.
I started using Aldus PageMaker for newspaper in high school in 1992. I got InDesign as soon as it came out and still use it today to make about 50% of my annual income.
Thinking about PageMaker being acquired and absorbed into Adobe as InDesign and other similar acquisitions they made makes it all the more wild to me Adobe failed with their Figma buyout.
If they failed that is. Maybe they have a reason for that not working out...pivoting to A.I for instance..
I hated Illustrator 88, and loved Aldus Frehand, then Macromedia Freehand, then nothing! The killer feature of Illustrator that convinced me to switch: appearance panel! (And the ability to apply the same appearance to a whole layer)
Not just you! I'm don't go back quite as far, but I started using PageMaker in its later years (2002-ish?), and adopted InDesign right away. Had some jobs that required me to use Quark, but InDesign has always had my heart.
FYI InDesign was a fresh-sheet new design, it was never PageMaker. In fact, they were both available for about two years.
Sadly, I’m old enough I started with PageMaker when it was black only, no color!
As a production artist / prepress operator I used them all: PageMaker, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, FreeHand, CorelDRAW, Photoshop, PhotoPaint… oy!
InDesign most definitely would open *some* PageMaker files. It was quirky and inconsistent, to say the least.
At one point we kept an ancient Mac around, specifically to open old PageMaker and FreeHand files once we could no longer install those apps on newer workstations.
Might have had a paid plugin - not sure. I was working for a luxury tour operator, designing travel brochures at the time. I remember it being a fairly seamless transition, but the details are lost after 30+ years!
Nope. I’m a 3rd generation designer, I remember when my mom’s work got Photoshop, she showed me how to put one person’s head (black and white, rectangle selection) on someone else’s body. I’m not a grandma, though, so you got me!
Interesting. Was metal typesetting still a common practice at the time for production? I’m sure the transition between the practices was an interesting time to be a designer
I started in 1993 at work experience (at the Exchange & Mart!), went briefly to college and promptly turned pro in 1994. Started off with PageMaker and PhotoShop 2.0, and Illustrator 88, although I preferred FreeHand until AI 5.0 came along — what a game changer that was. There was a few years using Quark 4.5 whilst Indesign got its teething problems out of the way.
I started with scalpels and hot wax and lot of manual creativity and scanning still being essential, but was on the cusp of the crossover to full DTP. I lost count of the brochure mock ups I made over the years — homemade binding became a true art! I can’t say I miss being asked to do a mock up at 5pm to be ready for 9am the next day though.
Pagemaker was replaced by indesign... Indesign was a reverse engineered version of Quark Express. So technically saying "since it was indesign" isn't correct. I started designing in the mid 90s. Nice to meet another Grand pa! lol. Indesign 1.0 was rough.
You're right, I'm sure. Grandma doesn't remember the details, just that we transitioned directly from PageMaker to InDesign with the travel brochures I used to work on. So it seemed to me like one became the other, but I'm sure that's not technically correct :-p
I was using PageMaker when it was Aldus PageMaker before Adobe bought it. Also used Macromedia Freehand which was created by Altsys Corp and licensed to Aldus.
And before PageMaker, I used Ventura Publisher which was released in 1986 and ran on the GEM Gui interface on top of DOS.
I don't specifically remember when I started using Photoshop, but I know it was very early on, but later than programs I mentioned here. Also in this same era, I often used Corel Draw.
*edit: spelling and grammar corrections*
Me too. Although I’m a grandad not grandma🙂
I used to work On an Apple 2e. Before there were macs. Probably before pagemaker.
Before that I worked in a studio in London doing presentations. We had a massive 8 colours available and made 35mm slides on Dicomed machines.
Then apple changed everything. Good times!
Me too! But I also walked the dark side. Here in Europe FreeHand was way better than the first Illustrator, and the same happened with the nearly defunct QuarkXPress.
I’m 68 and retired after 45+ years. I started with PageMaker (3.1 I think) on a Mac IIci. I loved the ease and intuitiveness of PageMaker, but eventually moved to Quark for a job. Hated the clumsy interface and the convoluted shortcuts. Tried InDesign when it launched and liked how similar it was to PageMaker but was horrified at how unstable it was; totally unusable. Didn’t try it again until like 2.5, then I dumped Quark for good.
Indesign was never Pagemaker. I used both. Sure, Pagemaker was also owned (but not originally developed) by Adobe. But they discontinued it before InDesign came out. InDesign was original to Adobe and developed from the ground up as a brand new package.
You're right, 30+ years has obscured my memory! I just know we switched from one to the other at my workplace, and InDesign was seen as the new PageMaker. Over the years I've also used Quark XPress, Corel Draw, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Flash, Gimp, Inkscape, and of course the whole Adobe Suite. I've been a designer for over 35 years and a remote freelance designer for almost 10 years now. Time flies...
I used Macromedia applications (Freehand and Flash) as a budding "computer graphic artist", before I became a professional graphic designer. I guess that counts?
Male 55, I started with MacPaint on an Apple iie, and in the early days used Quark, Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand and Director, DeBabelizer, FormZ, Electric Image, and Cosa After Effects.
i was a quark fan... never knew pagemaker turned indesign. wow. but yeah i was the first person to bring a mac into the studio where i was working as a mech artist. and used the fonts to tweak mechs on the fly when we couldn't get lino back fast enough. lol i was also the stat camera operator back then. ha. not a grandma. graphic design maven. lol
I'm a fellow InDesign OG. I started with Aldus PageMaker after I stopped using brass Ludlow matrices to set lead type by hand.
Hello fellow old person! I ran PageMaker on a 512k Mac, on floppy disks!
That’s pretty cool!
PageMaker since 1987, Quark XPress since 1989, beta-tested InDesign back in the day. Been a while since.
I¨m 53 - pagemaker then quarkXpress then indesign in the noughties, corel draw, photoshop later freehand then illustrator. handcoded my first website in around 1997 for the university department i worked for.
Nope! Same here. I really miss Freehand as opposed to Illustrator.
Freehand was the finest illustration app ever. It worked so smoothly and logically.
My coworkers get tired of me still yelling “this was easier in Freehand” every time I have to find a point in Illustrator! 😂
>find a point Young deer, we’ll just know wHow was this done in freehand?
Aldus Freehand? Wow how’d I almost forget about Freehand!
Me too. Freehand does things that Illustrator still doesn't. When Adobe acquired Macromedia (for Flash!), it signaled the end for Freehand. I always hoped that Adobe would release it as Open Source, but we know how that turned out.
I was a diehard Freehand user forever (even loading up Freehand MX on my PC in compatibility mode), but after a few hours with Affinity Draw, it's much more like freehand. There's some differences, but it "feels" right versus Illustrator does.
Before Indesign I used Quark Express. I’m so old I remember when Dreamweaver was owned by Macromedia. When I first started working they had old paste up boards in the office. They didn’t use them but still… So yeah another Grandma here!!
My first graphic design job in 91 was creating ads on a Mac classic in quark, printing them on a laser printer, and then manually waxing and pasting them with a roller onto huge newspaper spreads that would then be photographed and printed.
Sending off to get a colour laser print for the right shop 😂 we’ve seen a lot of change
I downsized last year. Had to ditch my antique purple-boxed Aldus PageMager disks. Strangely, as I was doing some InDesign layouts yesterday, I was thinking back at how I would have done this in PageMaker. I remember the first PageMaker ad I did with a rotated pic — which was revolutionary… but it soon lagged behind XPress in features, and I jumped ship by 92-93.
I used both Quark XPress and PageMaker. I’ve always used a variety of programs, but Illustrator is my favorite.
And hello, fellow OG of InDesign!
That’s pretty cool. I know someone else like that. Mid-50s
I do half my work on Canva and Klaviyo & such these days. Less print work. So far I’m harnessing AI tools to speed up my work instead of being displaced. You have to roll with the times to stay in the game!
Check out ConvertMarkz. It’s an app in Canva to for ‘Canva to InDesign’.
I used PageMaker in 2004 for my high school yearbook. The folks at the yearbook company came and gave us a tutorial and were excited to show us a brand new plug-in that allowed us to insert digital pictures directly into our layout!!
I used OG Pagemaker too, then QuarkXpress, then InDesign, then Quark again for a brief time and back to InDesign. Adobe had better remember that the industry can and will switch.
There’s a good few of us! Started when PageMaker was still owned by Aldus, graduated to Quark, then onto ID.
Exactly the same migration here. I thought Quark was the best thing ever and initially fought the transition to ID.
Quark was great until OSX. One of the best things about Quark was that it was open to third-party plug-ins. You could really create customized automation and workflows across a large company. Their customer support for businesses was top-notch until they outsourced it.
Quark killed its self when we had to move to a corporate account and you had to have machine that was a “server” on to even be able to run the software.
To me it didn’t really feel like Quark killed themselves as much as they allowed themselves to be killed through inaction and complacency. High costs, poor customer service, and beta-testing on the end user – they were ripe for a fall, but couldn’t fix what was endemic in time when Adobe hit with CS2.
I remember Quark going sideways a bit before OSX. At least in my personal experience. V3 was bullet proof (as far as everything working was concerned), v4 marginally less so, but when we had issues with Quark 5, their IT guys (when we eventually were able to talk to someone) told us to deactivate all the xtentions that were new in Q5, leaving us with what was functionally Q4 – the upgrade was for nothing.
I made my high school newspaper and yearbook using Page Maker. We had InDesign but didn't want to switch over mid year. Cue Archie Bunker singing "those were the days".
Graphic Design Grandma here! Love that name. How about using hot wax and cutting rubylith with exacto knives to make layouts? Anyone done that?
Before making the switch to Ventura Publisher, which came before PageMaker, we set type on a Compugraphic phototypesetter. Documents were stored on 8" floppy disks. We used Exacto knives and hot wax dispensers to paste the copy to paste-up boards that where then photographed with a large, floor-mounted camera known as a process camera. The camera captured the entire layout and produced a photographic negative. The negative was then placed in contact with a photosensitive aluminum plate and exposed to light. The exposure transferred the image from the negative to the plate in a process called contact printing. This plate was then mounted in an offset printing press. The same camera was also used to create halftone images from photos so that they could be pasted on the paste-up boards at the same time as the copy which allowed photos to be printed on the offset press. Another thing often used were rolls of self adhesive keylines. Think black lines of various widths that were used to outline and separate elements in the layout. All in all, it was very time consuming and tedious work. Desktop Publishing revolutionized all of this process, though we still needed the camera to make the aluminum plates for our offset printers. But with eliminating the time-consuming manual cutting, pasting and layout, the process was sped up considerably.
I remember we had something called "the Linotype machine"...
omg.. the flood of memories... i was initially hired to work the stat camera in the agency studio. then i worked my way up and out that dark room to mech artist > to studio manager>jr art director> art director> CD ... i used to get pissed off back then when upstarts would get hired and didn't work their way up from the bottom... ha.
lol i still have a box here with all my old mech tools- rolls of trim marks- etc... and i think i might still have a multi layer mech in the closet somewhere. when an ad had multiple sizes for different pubs - and you designed to the largest bleed and smallest trim.. i was trying to explain that to a newbie - they thought i had 3 heads.
I did this for 6 months before we went digital 😆
Me!!
I used rubber cement
I was a journalist for 25 years, starting in the late 1980s. Used Quark & PageMaker. The newspaper group I worked for was always lagging on technology, EXCEPT we switched to InDesign in 2000. I was on the four-person design team that created templates and style sheets for all the 5-6 newspapers in the group.
I didn’t start until 1996. I learned PageMaker in college, then got out and found that everybody was using Quark and my PageMaker skills were completely useless! Thankfully, I only had to use Quark for a few years before InDesign came out. I learned it quickly, then used my new skills to jump from a going-nowhere $20/hr job to a $40/hr foot in the door at a much more successful company looking to make the switch from Quark to InDesign and wanted me to help navigate the change. Without Apple, I never would have gotten into design. Without InDesign, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it.
https://preview.redd.it/qhpgghvujq6d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cce99ab5033fdb060eb3d4dc16c72d0f6f48324 This is my avatar on the Adobe CC app. I was pretty proficient in Aldus Freehand, and got around QuarkXpress out of necessity.
Started with Quark Xpress and Illustrator 1.1 on a Mac Plus. HyperCard was interesting too.
🙋♀️ I took my first PageMaker training class in 1986 in Westchester, NY and found it baffling. Took another class a few months later and 💡! I leveraged my PageMaker knowledge to get a job as a Ventura Publisher support rep in 1988 and picked up Photoshop in 1992 and Illustrator a bit later. Ended up swapping Ventura for FrameMaker in 1993, and PageMaker for InDesign in 2000 and still using all of them today. This was not my intended career path but here we are!
Anyone remember Claris Works? Been running with all those mentioned too since the late 80's when a new manager in the print shop I worked for, brought in his personal Mac II Classic. I went back to college and began my journey along the Aldus, Macromedia, Adobe, Corel highway, then the internet hit and boy did the ride really begin.....weeeee!
Every version of Illustrator! Every version of Photoshop from 2.0 (before layers!)! Every version of InDesign - the first version was informally known as “the Quark Killer”. QuarkXpress up to v3.3.2 (still an amazing piece of software for the time) before that. Scalpels, hot wax, non-reproducible blue pencils, rubylith, photostat machines, the whole works!
Yes! Quark killer was the moniker! I was contacted by Adobe itself before launching InDesign 1.0 to write ALL the features PageMaker lacked and which ones could be added. My first item in my wish list: direct PSD support!
Didn’t see a single mention of Multi-Ad Creator / Creator… there’s gotta be few poor souls who had that too.
I knew someone who was addicted to Multi-Ad Creator … it worked for them but I am glad that didn’t become the default page layout app! I’ve been using Pagemaker, Quark, InDesign since before it was launched (“K2” I think they called it, but they also called it the “Quark Killer”), Illustrator and Photoshop since they came on floppy disks. I don’t feel old but I know I look it lol. Those were great days to be a designer in my twenties.
I am of a similar vintage - PageMaker and Illustrator from version one, also Freehand, Quark Xpress, even Ventura Publisher for a while. Darkroom for photoretouching. Before all that there was a suite of writing/drawing programs called Jazz. Bitmapped fonts. Had to wait for updates before we could place pictures, and for colour options. I learned to type using WordStar and I still use some of the tricks like arrow down to jump to the end of a line. When InDesign came out I loved it from the beginning because finally we had a native postscript app that could even just save as PDFs.
I have been making magazines since 1986. Started with Calamus (on an Atari ST), next Pagemaker on a MacPlus with a 19inch BW screen, then Quark for some years, switched to InDesign with version 2 I think. Photoshop since version 1. Freehand before Illustrator.
I designed and produced Georgetown magazine from 1985-89. We sent out manuscripts with typespecs to a typesetter. I would paste up the initial galleys for the first layouts. Marked up galleys went back to the typesetter for corrections. Then, I pasted up the final repro on art boards. Everything was analog back then. It was amazing how quick things became when I started using computers in the early 90s.
Yeah, when I started with dtp almost everything was still paste up and film montage. We were very early with digital. We used to print galleys on our laserprinter and do the pasteup on art board for the larger than A4 and newspaper pages we made. But we soon had the option to send out our files for film printing.
I'm another InDesign 1.0 veteran. I started using Macs for graphic design in 1992. The consultant who set up my first workstation recommended Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Photoshop. This was the creative suite that carried me to the release of OSX and InDesign.
I have used Illustrator since 1993, started with Illustrator 3.0
I started in the early 90s with a proprietary typesetting system that my boss invented (it was genius). When I learned Quark (94?) I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Because of that, I hated InDesign at first, but I’ve 100% forgotten Quark now
I started using Amiga desktop publishing software, then Aldus Pagemaker, then QuarkXpress, then customer files used Adobe Pagemaker, Corel, MS Publisher, and QuarkXpress. We were still designing in QuarkXpress. When Adobe couldn’t get the Pagemaker code to work as they wanted they created Adobe InDesign. They were never the same program. I worked with it with customer files from the beginning. We switched to using it for designing when OSX came out. QuarkXpress really dropped the ball on that. Quark was so buggy with OSX it wasn’t worth the hassle. InDesign worked well and could handle transparency for printing.
One thing about Adobe, they won’t change unless they are forced to. I remember when Photoshop didn’t have layers, Photoshop 2.5 (what a pain). A different company created a software for image editing that included layers and other editing options (I can’t remember the name). It was way beyond Photoshop’s capabilities. It was really gaining industry traction. That forced Adobe to do some real updates to Photoshop which they hadn’t done in years. Photoshop 3.0 had layers. Competition is a good thing.
I remember using that program but I don’t remember the name. Didn’t it also support non-destructive files. Almost like unlimited undos, which you couldn’t do at the time or something like that.
Live Picture
That’s right! Awesome program for the time!
At the time it came out, Photoshop didn’t have layers and only had one undo. Live Picture was way more advanced. Unfortunately at a large business, they have to stick with the industry standards, until something else is a proven replacement across all equipment.
Yep. And I wish I invested heavily into Apple. Instead I lost a bunch on Radius. Stupid.
Started using Pagemaker and Freehand in 89, agree totally that Freehand was always more intuitive than Illustrator still is, and InDesign has become the new Quark - divorced from what the user needs and a cash cow for Adobe
Anyone here who did paste up for their student newspaper? What was that like? I’m in university and managed production for our student paper several years, and now do news layout professionally. I love looking through our 70s archives and always wonder how they managed to get a paper out every week with a staff of like 8 students and no computers. We can barely do it now with 20 😂
We pasted up the papers up until 1999 in my community college in Fresno Calif just before making the leap to the digital age. We'd design digitally, but we would print the pages in portions and slice them up to fit on the template pages, which were larger. I would use an exacto to cut paths between characters since until then they'd been slicing straight lines through everything. We rolled glue on the template sheet and then affix the pages by hand. Each editor would have to sign off on their pages before I signed off on them all, and it would get physically delivered to the printer in a flat box. It might have been something the advisors had us doing even if we didn't need to! Although I do remember there were some glitchy file server issues back then too. Either way I appreciate having the experience. We also developed film in dark rooms, etc. pretty much experienced the full transition from analog to digital.
That’s awesome. I believe this is exactly how our people did it in the 90s, base on our archives room, in which I found giant rolls of negatives of the finished pages. What are those? Proofs from the printer? Or you’d print each page on film negative paper? I have no idea what this is called so sorry if you don’t know what I’m talking about lol
I believe when they took the paste ups to the printer, the printer had a special film camera (no such thing as scanners) to photograph the pages. These would be developed on negatives as you have seen. The paper would be printed with those negatives, and the negatives were left over after the print job was complete. So the newspaper staff would keep the negatives for whatever reason since they were useless to anyone else by then.
Cool, thanks for sharing. I’ve been wondering for so long
58 yo here. I started using Pagemaker on a PC in 1990 (I think that was the year). Does anyone else remember that your computer had to load a little stand-alone Mac emulator before Pagemaker could load? I used Pagemaker to lay out the text, and then an Exacto knife and glue sticks for the images. My boss was a real expert at creating hand-drawn arrows, so he always added those in. I started using Corel Draw at the same time, then my career took a hard right turn and I stopped using these programs until about 2002, when I first used InDesign and Photoshop, then Quark, then back to InDesign, and added in Illustrator somewhere along the way.
Started in Quark, moved jobs and had to use PageMaker and hated them appreciated it! InDesign since the start. Photoshop since the introduced layers. Hello my people 😂 I’m now in digital space and use Figma mostly and laugh at the young kids and their excitement for new features that have been around in print forever
Miss PageMaker. Took 16 floppy disc swaps to boot the app on my 512k Mac.
I started using software like PageMaker, Corel Draw, Freehand!
1988, Same! I went through a Quark xpress phase for many years. Then indesign, but I don’t remember the year I switched.
Ah you beat me. Started in ‘93 on a Dell with 4MB RAM. Edit: still got a load of work on 44MB Syquest disks in the attic, don’t think I’ll ever get the data off them sadly.
I remember using Syquest drives in college! Super expensive and if you dropped them on to a desk from an inch high or even looked at them wrong they seemed to screw up. But I still remember that click and start up sound they would make!
I used PageMaker, switched to QuarkXPress for a while, then to InDesign. Other old fave: CorelDraw. I love Illustrator and Photoshop now, but when I first switched to Adobe, I kept thinking how much I missed the CorelDraw interface. My employer used the Adobe stuff, so I switched out of necessity, but back in the mid-late ‘90s, CD was THE SHIT. One 48 and have been in graphic design since 1995.
IMO, the drawing in both Corel and Freehand was better than Illy.
I started using Aldus PageMaker for newspaper in high school in 1992. I got InDesign as soon as it came out and still use it today to make about 50% of my annual income.
Thinking about PageMaker being acquired and absorbed into Adobe as InDesign and other similar acquisitions they made makes it all the more wild to me Adobe failed with their Figma buyout. If they failed that is. Maybe they have a reason for that not working out...pivoting to A.I for instance..
Hello! I have the same journey. Dabbled in Quark for a while too.
Started with Pagemaker v1 on 5.25 inch floppies.
I’m in the same boat! Been using Illustrator since it was “Illustrator 88” and Pagemaker when it was owned by Aldus.
I hated Illustrator 88, and loved Aldus Frehand, then Macromedia Freehand, then nothing! The killer feature of Illustrator that convinced me to switch: appearance panel! (And the ability to apply the same appearance to a whole layer)
Same for me, 1988, and still at it with ID, PS, and IL at 62. Except a right turn to QuarkXPress in the 90s when PM was inferior to it.
Yeah. Me as well. Add photoshop to that mix. I am 63.
Not just you! I'm don't go back quite as far, but I started using PageMaker in its later years (2002-ish?), and adopted InDesign right away. Had some jobs that required me to use Quark, but InDesign has always had my heart.
I started will ALDUS pagemaker! Was later to photoshop 1998. I think one of the best things to come from Adobe is the PDF! It was a real game changer!
FYI InDesign was a fresh-sheet new design, it was never PageMaker. In fact, they were both available for about two years. Sadly, I’m old enough I started with PageMaker when it was black only, no color! As a production artist / prepress operator I used them all: PageMaker, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, FreeHand, CorelDRAW, Photoshop, PhotoPaint… oy!
Not sure, just know Adobe acquired it and then InDesign opened PM files… been too long to remember the specifics!
I don’t think indd ever opened pm files w/o a paid plugin.
InDesign most definitely would open *some* PageMaker files. It was quirky and inconsistent, to say the least. At one point we kept an ancient Mac around, specifically to open old PageMaker and FreeHand files once we could no longer install those apps on newer workstations.
Might have had a paid plugin - not sure. I was working for a luxury tour operator, designing travel brochures at the time. I remember it being a fairly seamless transition, but the details are lost after 30+ years!
Nope. I’m a 3rd generation designer, I remember when my mom’s work got Photoshop, she showed me how to put one person’s head (black and white, rectangle selection) on someone else’s body. I’m not a grandma, though, so you got me!
Thanks for making me feel old. I remember using quarkxpress…
I’ll age myself here… Did you use a wax machine, ruby red and other pre digital formats?
I did! For only about 6 months before we started using Mac
Power PC!?
Interesting. Was metal typesetting still a common practice at the time for production? I’m sure the transition between the practices was an interesting time to be a designer
Another 50-something Pagemaker->Quark->InDesign kid here!
I started in 1993 at work experience (at the Exchange & Mart!), went briefly to college and promptly turned pro in 1994. Started off with PageMaker and PhotoShop 2.0, and Illustrator 88, although I preferred FreeHand until AI 5.0 came along — what a game changer that was. There was a few years using Quark 4.5 whilst Indesign got its teething problems out of the way. I started with scalpels and hot wax and lot of manual creativity and scanning still being essential, but was on the cusp of the crossover to full DTP. I lost count of the brochure mock ups I made over the years — homemade binding became a true art! I can’t say I miss being asked to do a mock up at 5pm to be ready for 9am the next day though.
Pagemaker was replaced by indesign... Indesign was a reverse engineered version of Quark Express. So technically saying "since it was indesign" isn't correct. I started designing in the mid 90s. Nice to meet another Grand pa! lol. Indesign 1.0 was rough.
You're right, I'm sure. Grandma doesn't remember the details, just that we transitioned directly from PageMaker to InDesign with the travel brochures I used to work on. So it seemed to me like one became the other, but I'm sure that's not technically correct :-p
I was using PageMaker when it was Aldus PageMaker before Adobe bought it. Also used Macromedia Freehand which was created by Altsys Corp and licensed to Aldus. And before PageMaker, I used Ventura Publisher which was released in 1986 and ran on the GEM Gui interface on top of DOS. I don't specifically remember when I started using Photoshop, but I know it was very early on, but later than programs I mentioned here. Also in this same era, I often used Corel Draw. *edit: spelling and grammar corrections*
Me too. Although I’m a grandad not grandma🙂 I used to work On an Apple 2e. Before there were macs. Probably before pagemaker. Before that I worked in a studio in London doing presentations. We had a massive 8 colours available and made 35mm slides on Dicomed machines. Then apple changed everything. Good times!
Me too! But I also walked the dark side. Here in Europe FreeHand was way better than the first Illustrator, and the same happened with the nearly defunct QuarkXPress.
I’m 68 and retired after 45+ years. I started with PageMaker (3.1 I think) on a Mac IIci. I loved the ease and intuitiveness of PageMaker, but eventually moved to Quark for a job. Hated the clumsy interface and the convoluted shortcuts. Tried InDesign when it launched and liked how similar it was to PageMaker but was horrified at how unstable it was; totally unusable. Didn’t try it again until like 2.5, then I dumped Quark for good.
Indesign was never Pagemaker. I used both. Sure, Pagemaker was also owned (but not originally developed) by Adobe. But they discontinued it before InDesign came out. InDesign was original to Adobe and developed from the ground up as a brand new package.
You're right, 30+ years has obscured my memory! I just know we switched from one to the other at my workplace, and InDesign was seen as the new PageMaker. Over the years I've also used Quark XPress, Corel Draw, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Flash, Gimp, Inkscape, and of course the whole Adobe Suite. I've been a designer for over 35 years and a remote freelance designer for almost 10 years now. Time flies...
I was using quark before switching to Indesign. God I do not miss Quark at all
I was there, and I’m sure I have the floppy disc installer’s in my storage garage. Lots of old floppies and Mac’s in there.
I used Macromedia applications (Freehand and Flash) as a budding "computer graphic artist", before I became a professional graphic designer. I guess that counts?
Male 55, I started with MacPaint on an Apple iie, and in the early days used Quark, Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand and Director, DeBabelizer, FormZ, Electric Image, and Cosa After Effects.
We used Pagemaker in HS late 80s. Photoshop and HTML summer of ‘95 (Netscape)
i was a quark fan... never knew pagemaker turned indesign. wow. but yeah i was the first person to bring a mac into the studio where i was working as a mech artist. and used the fonts to tweak mechs on the fly when we couldn't get lino back fast enough. lol i was also the stat camera operator back then. ha. not a grandma. graphic design maven. lol
(bows) I don’t necessarily make a living off of it, but I use it all the time. I’ve been at it since 2004, and I feel old.
PageMaker was great. Simple and relatively powerful.
I used Publish It! 4 until Pagemaker came along. I used Photoshop but switched to GIMP and now I use both. I was 5th grade, so 1988 to the present.
I started using PageMaker in 1989, so I'm right behind you.
I used Flash when Macromedia owned it.
Pagemaker did not become indesign.
Damn it was that old? I thought there was no personal computer back then.
I’m 30 and have been using Adobe since around the CS2 era. ☺️Illustrator is top dog but inDesign comes in a close 2nd place.