SAN FRANCISCO—There was no question about the message graphic-arts consultant David Blatner was sending to the attendees of the InDesign Conferenceat 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 havent done anything. All the innovation that weve seen, and Quark hasnt done anything with them. Adobe has.”
Blatner, who doesnt 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.