Playboy Switches to InDesign

Though the venerable men's magazine and self-described "lifestyle brand" has not made an official announcement, reliable sources have it that Playboy Magazine has switched from a QuarkXPress-based workflow to InDesign.

Playboy Magazine switch­es to InDesign

Quark VS InDesign read­er John Schubert alert­ed us to this juicy tid­bit. A mem­ber of the InDesign Talk mail­ing list stat­ed the following:

Our cir­cu­la­tion man­ag­er is mar­ried to a senior design­er at Playboy Magazine, and she told me today that they are switch­ing the Editorial staff over to InDesign start­ing next week; with the ad design­ers to fol­low. They’re tak­ing a 2‑week train­ing ses­sion to make the transition.

Witty respons­es about feath­ered edges, drop shad­ows and stroked type will fol­low I’m sure.…

Author and train­er Anne-Marie Concepcion con­firmed the news: “I’m their InDesign train­er! Just fin­ished the first ses­sion today … eight art direc­tors. Having lots of fun!”

By the time of this writ­ing, Playboy’s con­ver­sion to InDesign should be complete.

If any Quark VS InDesign read­ers sub­scribe to Playboy Magazine, let us know if the next few issues look dif­fer­ent, with InDesign-only fea­tures like trans­paren­cy, feath­er­ing, or para­graph com­po­si­tion, than pri­or issues. I would expect the InDesign-produced issues to begin appear­ing with the April release (May or June cov­er date).