Let's Talk VDP with Will Eisley

There's been a lot of talk lately about Variable Data Publishing (VDP) support on the desktop. VDP solutions exist for InDesign--and more are on the way. But what are those solutions? What can InDesign do?

Variable Data Publishing (VDP), long the dar­ling tech­nol­o­gy of direct mar­keters who bring the “you,  Bob Smith  of  Hoboken, NJ , might already be a win­ner” announce­ments to your mail­box, is matur­ing into a seri­ous pub­lish­ing tech­nol­o­gy with tremen­dous poten­tial for cus­tomiza­tion. Publix Supermarkets, the Southeasten United States largest chain, is using VDP to cus­tomize each week­ly mailed sales fly­er with data col­lect­ed from dis­count card shop­pers. And the tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing an affect through the graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions realm.

Nick Gillespie, edi­tor in chief of Libertarian mag­a­zine Reason, said: “What if you received a mag­a­zine that only had sto­ries and ads that you were inter­est­ed in and per­tained to you? That would be a mag­a­zine that every­one would want to read.”

The cov­er of each of the 40,000 direct mailed copies of Reason’s June 2004 issue fea­tured a satel­lite pho­to of the indi­vid­ual sub­scriber’s house. In the same issue, the Editor’s Note cus­tomized its con­tent to sub­scribers’ spe­cif­ic com­mute time, edu­ca­tion lev­el, and oth­er data the month­ly mag­a­zine keeps on file. The goal of the exer­cise was to prove that if Reason could do it, any­one could.

According to Will Eisley, Adobe’s Group Product Manager for InDesign, InCopy, & GoLive, any­one can.

Quark VS InDesign​.com Let’s talk Variable Data Publishing. Why all the inter­est in VDP?

Will Eisley VDP has been around in var­i­ous forms for a long time, dri­ven in large part by direct mar­keters who want­ed to cre­ate per­son­al­ized pitch­es. Now VDP is evolv­ing to place as much empha­sis on a rich design expe­ri­ence as on per­son­al­ized con­tent. In the past, direct mar­keters were con­tent with enter­ing a name in Courier into a tem­plate to achieve per­son­al­iza­tion. Now they want that per­son­al­ized con­tent to be set in beau­ti­ful type with a live drop shad­ow and a host of oth­er design touch­es that make it a more appeal­ing experience.

QvI Aside from the rudi­men­ta­ry VDP avail­able with InDesign CS2’s (and InDesign CS PageMaker Edition’s) Data Merge, what options are avail­able for full-function VDP in InDesign?

WE While InDesign sup­ports basic VDP func­tion­al­i­ty through its Data Merge fea­ture, it does not pro­vide industrial-strength VDP func­tion­al­i­ty straight out of the box. Instead InDesign pro­vides a robust plat­form based on open stan­dards for cus­tomers and third-party part­ners to build a wide vari­ety of VDP solu­tions that meet dif­fer­ent VDP needs. For exam­ple, XML-savvy cus­tomers typ­i­cal­ly build auto­mat­ed VDP work­flows by cre­at­ing XML-tagged InDesign tem­plates and writ­ing scripts that pull infor­ma­tion from their data­bas­es to flow into those tem­plates and dri­ve their output. 

In addi­tion, third-party partners–including Creo (Creo Darwin VI recent­ly moved from beta to pro­duc­tion), Sansui, Em Software, XMPie, and others–have built a wide vari­ety of VDP solu­tions around InDesign. These solutions: 

• Address dif­fer­ent VDP appli­ca­tions (cat­a­logs, direct mail, mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­al and more);
• Support dif­fer­ent out­put types (PDF, VPS, VIPP, PPML, VDX, PostScript);
• Work on one or more plat­forms (Mac, Windows);
• Are often avail­able in dif­fer­ent local­ized ver­sions, and;
• Output to a vari­ety of devices.

These third-party solu­tions pro­vide a depth and breadth of choice to meet cus­tomer needs.

Adobe is also pilot­ing Adobe InDesign Server CS2, a new tech­nol­o­gy plat­form for third-party sys­tems inte­gra­tors and devel­op­ers to build design-driven, server-based pub­lish­ing solu­tions. It is the Adobe InDesign CS2 engine, with its inno­v­a­tive design and typog­ra­phy fea­tures, adapt­ed for serv­er usage. This serv­er tech­nol­o­gy will enable Adobe part­ners to pro­vide new lev­els of automa­tion and effi­cien­cy in high-end edi­to­r­i­al work­flows, col­lat­er­al cre­ation, Web-based design solutions–and, of course, vari­able data publishing. 

QVI How acces­si­ble are these solu­tions to the aver­age cre­ative or pro­duc­tion depart­ment who would make use of them? 

WE Third-party VDP solu­tions range in com­plex­i­ty. For exam­ple, XMPie cre­ates a range of plug-ins from XMPie uDirect Standard, which is acces­si­ble to design­ers, to XMPie PersonalEffect, which is direct­ed at print ser­vice providers who are pro­vid­ing high­ly cus­tomiz­able VDP ser­vices. Some solu­tions have a sim­ple Web-based inter­face for set­ting up vari­able data and select­ing tem­plates, and oth­ers have more com­plex con­trols over busi­ness log­ic, out­put, and more. Our goal in pro­vid­ing a plat­form for third-party VDP solu­tions is to sup­port our part­ners in address­ing a wide vari­ety of cus­tomer needs–including scal­ing from more acces­si­ble solu­tions to more com­plex and pow­er­ful ones. 

QVI How acces­si­ble does it need to be? Should a VDP solu­tion have been built into InDesign, or are cre­ative pros bet­ter served by leav­ing such func­tions to third-party developers?

WE We believe that cus­tomers are bet­ter served through third-party VDP solu­tions because they get a wider breadth and depth of options to meet their needs. Adobe’s goal is to pro­vide Adobe Creative Suite as a state-of-the-art design plat­form that sup­ports design­ers and their clients in achiev­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tion goals. That plat­form also pro­vides rich sup­port for third par­ties to cre­ate more cus­tomized design solu­tions that fit into diverse work­flows: For exam­ple, InDesign–and oth­er Suite components–is built on open stan­dards, such as XML, as well as de fac­to stan­dards, such as PostScript, PDF, and XMP; pro­vides a rich API in a C++ SDK; and sup­ports script­ing using JavaScript, AppleScript, and VBScript. Using InDesign and the Adobe plat­form, third par­ties can dive more deeply into spe­cif­ic cus­tomer needs around vari­able data pub­lish­ing (and oth­er areas) to define and devel­op niche solutions.

Customers win in two ways through this approach: They get the ben­e­fit of a high­ly inte­grat­ed core set of design tools deliv­ered by Adobe. They also get their niche needs met by expe­ri­enced third par­ties build­ing on open stan­dards and the Adobe design plat­form. We believe in pow­er­ing an ecosys­tem that can pro­vide the solu­tion choic­es and sup­port cus­tomers need. 

QVI When should we expect to see the first solu­tions based on InDesign Server? 

WE We can’t release spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about when partner-deployed InDesign Server CS2 prod­ucts will be avail­able. However, we can tell you that we have an exten­sive pilot pro­gram under­way for InDesign Server CS2 to work with diverse part­ners inter­est­ed in solv­ing dif­fer­ent work­flow issues for our customers. 

QVI Can you tell us what types of solu­tions are being worked on by the sys­tem inte­gra­tors and devel­op­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pilot program? 

WE We can’t dis­cuss the spe­cif­ic solu­tions being devel­oped at this time. However, when we move from the pilot phase to the gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty phase for InDesign Server CS2, we expect to pro­vide detailed information. 

QVI Would you lay out for us a hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario of InDesign Server in use in a VDP work­flow, from start to output? 

WE One sim­ple exam­ple would be to build a sys­tem that han­dles vari­able data bind­ing and print gen­er­a­tion on InDesign Server, free­ing up a client desk­top. So, for exam­ple, you might build the tem­plate in InDesign, but then use an InDesign Server solu­tion to process the vari­able data that gets placed into the tem­plate and gen­er­ate PDFs for print pro­duc­tion. There are many oth­er such sce­nar­ios for build­ing cus­tomized col­lat­er­al and oth­er high­ly designed, customer-centric materials. 

QVI Any last words on VDP? 

WE Yes, be sure to check out the vari­able data pub­lish­ing cen­ter on Adobe​.com to see the solu­tions cur­rent­ly avail­able for InDesign.

Additional Resources:

Website: Adobe VDP Resource Center
Article: Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover
Article: Adobe Drives the VDP Bandwagon with New VDP Resource Center