1. Desktop Publishing

DTP, or “desktop publishing,” was born in 1985 through the collaboration of Adobe Systems, Aldus Corporation, and Apple Computer. Prior to this, graphic designers worked with manual methods, such as paper, scissors, and glue. The introduction of DTP had a significant impact on organizational structures and established a new central role for the DTP publisher—a consolidation of various roles, such as graphic designer, typographer, typesetter, and secretary—within an organization. The time required for many DTP processes was drastically reduced from several hours or even days to minutes or even seconds. Aldus Corporation—the company behind the DTP application PageMaker—was acquired by Adobe in 1994, and PageMaker served as the foundation for Adobe InDesign, released in 1999. Today, InDesign can be licensed either as a standalone application or as part of a bundled software package. Adobe applications, including InDesign, are still considered the industry standard in the field of DTP. Furthermore, with rapid technological advancements, not only have the tools available for content creation changed significantly, but the range of media through which messages can be communicated has also multiplied.