Top Catalog Publishers Embrace Adobe InDesign CS2

Macy’s West, Plow & Hearth, Staples Cite Enhanced Quality and Production Efficiency in Decision to Move to InDesign CS2

Press Release

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(QUARKvsINDESIGN.com)–Aug. 2, 2005–Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that top retail­ers Macy’s West, Plow & Hearth, and Staples have adopt­ed Adobe ® InDesign® CS soft­ware, the inno­v­a­tive lay­out and design pro­gram, as their stan­dard for cat­a­log pro­duc­tion. Available as a stand­alone soft­ware appli­ca­tion or as a com­po­nent of Adobe Creative Suite 2 soft­ware, InDesign CS2 con­tin­ues to demon­strate tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship with its exten­sive new XML import fea­tures, enhanced script­ing mod­el and sup­port for trans­par­ent doc­u­ment exchange through INX.

Catalog pub­lish­ers cite three key rea­sons for their move to Adobe InDesign CS and now to InDesign CS2: the software’s excep­tion­al sup­port for script­ing — via JavaScript, AppleScript, or Microsoft Visual Basic — that auto­mates cat­a­log pub­lish­ing; tools for enhanced cre­ativ­i­ty; and tight inte­gra­tion with oth­er com­po­nents of Adobe Creative Suite 2 such as Adobe Photoshop® CS2, Illustrator® CS2, GoLive® CS2 and Acrobat® 7.0 Professional.

“In addi­tion to its extra­or­di­nary lay­out and design capa­bil­i­ties, lead­ing mar­keters and cat­a­log pub­lish­ers are using advanced fea­tures in InDesign CS2 to auto­mate the tasks of shar­ing and repur­pos­ing con­tent, keep­ing cre­ativ­i­ty at the fore­front of the pub­lish­ing process,” said John Brennan, senior vice pres­i­dent, Corporate Development at Adobe. “The result is that mar­keters can deliv­er attrac­tive, com­pelling mate­ri­als to their cus­tomers, while keep­ing costs low.”

Innovation With XML

At Staples, the world’s largest office prod­ucts com­pa­ny, strong sup­port for XML and script­ing in Adobe InDesign CS has allowed staff to auto­mate every­day tasks. Staples’ in-house pub­lish­ing group pro­duces about 15,000 jobs annu­al­ly, from cat­a­logs to sig­nage and pack­ag­ing. The group is increas­ing­ly mov­ing toward an auto­mat­ed pub­lish­ing mod­el using InDesign cat­a­log tem­plates and XML con­tent. With the abil­i­ty in InDesign CS2 to more fine­ly con­trol XML import and apply XML tags to table con­tent, the XML con­trol in InDesign CS2 is more ver­sa­tile and pow­er­ful than ever.

“Adobe con­tin­ues to evolve XML sup­port to meet a wide range of pub­lish­ing needs,” said Derrick Wood, vice pres­i­dent, cre­ative direc­tor for Staples, Inc. “Robust script­ing sup­port from Adobe prod­ucts is one of the ways our cre­ative and pro­duc­tion groups have been able to increase work­load by near­ly 20 per­cent over the last three years, with­out increas­ing our head­count. Especially due to excep­tion­al sup­port from Adobe, our switch to InDesign has been ben­e­fi­cial all around—helping us focus on our brand promise of mak­ing it easy to buy office products.”

Sophisticated Effects in Less Time

To achieve high lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while keep­ing costs down, Macy’s West auto­mates its design and pro­duc­tion work­flow, using InDesign CS and scripts to han­dle every­thing from image place­ment to page def­i­n­i­tions in cat­a­logs. Because script­ing is con­sis­tent across InDesign ver­sions and across oth­er Adobe appli­ca­tions, Macy’s West’s devel­op­ment group can be more pro­duc­tive. Using oth­er page lay­out solu­tions, scripts had to be changed with each new soft­ware upgrade, a cost­ly and time-consuming propo­si­tion for the Macy’s West IT staff. By using InDesign CS, Macy’s West no longer incurs these IT costs or delays. 

National cat­a­log, retail, and Internet com­pa­ny Plow & Hearth pub­lish­es 2,000 cat­a­log pages annu­al­ly with a pub­lish­ing staff of only 23 peo­ple. To main­tain a high lev­el of qual­i­ty while increas­ing effi­cien­cy, Plow & Hearth need­ed to stream­line cat­a­log pro­duc­tion through bet­ter man­age­ment and more effi­cient search of dig­i­tal assets: pho­tos, prod­uct descrip­tions, and page files. To max­i­mize pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cies, Plow & Hearth moved to InDesign CS to take advan­tage of its excep­tion­al script­ing sup­port and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the company’s dig­i­tal asset database.

“Once our soft­ware design­ers start­ed inves­ti­gat­ing, it became clear that InDesign CS was the best choice for link­ing to an exter­nal data­base because of its strong script­ing capabilities,” said Jean O. Giesmann, vice pres­i­dent of Creative Services for Plow & Hearth Inc. “In the cat­a­log pub­lish­ing world, that’s increas­ing­ly becom­ing essential.”

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is the world’s lead­ing provider of soft­ware solu­tions to cre­ate, man­age and deliv­er high-impact, reli­able dig­i­tal con­tent. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.adobe​.com.