SAN JOSE, Calif.--Oct. 11, 2004-- Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the VDP Resource Center www.adobe.com/vdp, an educational resource for creative professionals, marketing departments and print service providers that aims to kick-start the adoption and implementation of Variable Data Publishing (VDP) solutions. VDP automates the creation of customized materials by merging recurring content from a page layout template with variable data imported from a digital database. Using dynamic design software, such as Adobe InDesign CS, creative professionals and marketers then assemble these unique documents in which text, color and imagery are as individual as each recipient. VDP can provide an additional revenue stream for printers, and let marketers deliver more personalized campaigns that achieve higher response rates, yield greater return on investment and build stronger customer relationships. The VDP Resource Center showcases technologies and products and delivers educational materials to assist creative professionals and print providers in building direct marketing, lead generation, and loyalty campaigns quickly and easily. Customers can download free trial software and purchase VDP plug-in solutions from Adobe ISV partners, compatible with the Adobe Creative Suite, directly from the Resource Center. Launched in October 2003, Adobe Creative Suite is enabling leading publishers to transform and modernize print production and cross-media workflows. A growing ecosystem 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. "Today, more media channels and content streams compete for consumer attention. As a result, consumers expect marketing materials to be personalized. Our studies with consumers indicate that 69 percent prefer highly personalized direct mail. Spam laws have complicated this issue, forcing marketers to identify new ways to reach customers with personalized content," said Charlie Corr, group director, InfoTrends/CAPVentures. "These challenges have created new business opportunities for print providers in the form of VDP. Printers are able to offer more value-added services that increase revenue and marketers are developing campaigns that get a higher customer response rate." A host of VDP design and publishing tools from software developers and digital output system providers are available as plug-ins for the Adobe Creative Suite. XMPie, Datalogics, Creo, Em Software and Sansui all offer VDP workflow solutions to address a broad spectrum of needs. For example, with the new uDirect(TM) plug-in for Adobe InDesign CS from XMPie, creative professionals can design, preview and output VDP files for a multitude of output devices directly from their desktop. The DL Formatter DL-100(TM) from Datalogics lets Adobe Acrobat users create templates in any design tool and add the variable elements and logic from within Acrobat. "Marketers, designers and print providers that offer VDP-enabled solutions can grow their own businesses by helping customers produce more effective and profitable communications campaigns," said Jim Heeger, senior vice president of Creative Professional Products at Adobe. "With Adobe Creative Suite, InDesign CS and Acrobat on the desktop, VDP workflows are now accessible to a new generation of creative professionals who want to deliver personalized campaigns for print or the web."