To round out this look at Adobe and InDesign, WTT asked two InDesign users to comment on their experiences with the product and to explain how they use the software in their overall workflow.

Chris Iwanowski is a founding partner and project manager of Barking Dog Studios, a print and multimedia design firm located in Guelph, Ontario. His company uses InDesign differently than the typical print-document oriented design houses. Some of their projects involve the creation of the e-courses (PDF e-books).

Michael Caufman is the head of the Electronic Prepress Dept. at Homewood Press Inc., a printing company located in Toledo, Ohio. He has worked in a prepress environment for the past 11 years and has hands-on experience with most all major prepress applications.

John Dunn’s take

John C. Dunn is Director of Production and Manufacturing for Paizo Publishing, LLC. He began his career in printing 13+ years ago and is also an eXpert Row contributor to WhatTheyThink.com.

“Adobe’s largest challenge is perception of one type or another. The first incarnation of InDesign was not well received due to many bugs... it simply had issues and soured many people’s impression of the product. Since then, the new release has taken care of those issues, but once stung it’s hard to get people to come back for more.

“Adobe’s other hurdle is trying to convince designers and Art Directors that any transition will be pain-free. Publishers are on such tight deadlines and I would be burned in effigy if I even mentioned transitioning from QXP to another page layout application. Our folks simply feel (and this is straight from their mouths) that they don’t have the time to learn a new application and still make deadlines. In their minds, InDesign is less of an innovation and more of a bother. Perception has a great deal to do with positive change, or lack thereof, in our industry.”