SAN JOSE, Calif.--Sept. 8, 2004-- Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that Meredith Corporation, publisher of 17 popular magazine brands and approximately 450 special-interest magazines and books, is adopting Adobe Creative Suite software as its standard publishing solution. Within the integrated design environment of Adobe Creative Suite, Meredith will use Adobe InDesign CS, Adobe Illustrator CS, and Adobe Photoshop CS software to improve the design and layout of its publications and to support the company's cross-media publishing initiatives. The Meredith Publishing Group, a division of Meredith Corporation, reaches millions of readers every month with popular newsstand titles such as Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, as well as through online information services and its extensive offering of specialty publications, available electronically or on paper. "Publishing has moved well beyond producing only printed pages to encompass new ways for creating, delivering and repurposing content," said Bob Furstenau, director of publishing services at Meredith. "As a publishing platform, Adobe Creative Suite supports our vision for improving content creation and delivery. At the same time, the Adobe tools streamline design processes and improve the quality of all our materials." "Meredith Publishing recognizes that the future of publishing is built around a holistic approach, giving designers quick access to the tools they need to reliably create and view their work," said Jim Heeger, senior vice president of Creative Professional products at Adobe. "Adobe Creative Suite offers Meredith tight integration across leading design and layout software components, so that designers can create eye-catching titles that fly off the shelf." Adobe Creative Suite contrasts with Meredith's existing solution, which required designers to take a fragmented approach to handling text, page layout, and images. With InDesign CS, Meredith designers can design pages that incorporate transparency effects such as drop shadows or gradients, create guides in layouts to help ensure proper printing, and kern page text up to one millionth of an inch to continually enhance the appearance of materials. Content - including graphics, layered photos and illustrations - created with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator can be placed as native files, reworked, and viewed easily in Adobe InDesign. Once completed, staff will be able to save page content as XML files that can be stored in an asset management system at Meredith. Support for XML in Adobe Creative Suite will enable Meredith to reuse existing content and portions of layouts quickly and easily. Staff can then repurpose the content in materials delivered online or reassemble it for use in future publications. Meredith Publishing plans to migrate from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X later this year. After the transition is complete, the company then plans to roll out Adobe Creative Suite software to more than 700 design and editorial staff. Launched in October 2003, Adobe Creative Suite and InDesign CS are enabling leading publishers to transform and modernize print production and cross-media workflows. A growing eco-system of developers, systems integrators, print service providers and training partners are helping brand-name newspapers, magazines, retailers and advertising agencies worldwide build their businesses on Adobe's open-standards based publishing technology.