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A History of Adobe MAX
As I prepare to head off to the 2022 Adobe MAX Conference, it strikes me how much it's changed over the years. Here's a brief history of what it has been, and what it has become, since it was first called "Adobe MAX." Macromedia MAX Of course, it wasn't always "Adobe...
The Importance of Design in Data Visualization
Design and data may seem like two unrelated fields, and in some cases they are. The truth of the matter though, is that design is also a powerful tool that can transform how we understand a number of different fields –– and these include data science. Now that Big...
The Meat of the Metaverse
I have been a technologist for quite some time, and over the years, I've witnessed the evolution of several technologies. They often follow a similar path, beginning in early obscurity, before suddenly catapulting at a seemingly arbitrary point into the domain of wild...
How Creative Automation is Changing Design and Content – For the Better
Creative automation isn't just for self-service in consumer goods, or mechanical pickers in warehouses, or even sophisticated decision-making robots hard at work on product assembly lines. Robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are now accelerating...
Major charity revolutionizes fundraising with world-class web-to-print automation
Recently, a well-known healthcare charity has been experiencing a tremendous uptick in public interest, support and donations. This has come about since transitioning to web-to-print automation with the goal of extending community outreach and securing its long-term...
Retail Signage: Save Time and Enforce Brand with Silicon Designer
Retail signage poses unique challenges for all retailers, but especially for those that are large and geographically-distributed. They need to enforce brand consistency and identity, but the sales landscape changes rapidly, and their network of widespread stores needs...
Why DAM Vendors Should Leave Web To Print to the Experts
Overview Web to Print, or WYSIWYG print collateral customisation has become one of the more common add-on facilities that an increasing number of DAM vendors are either offering their clients or being asked to by them. There are three core elements of these kind of...
When and Why Adobe InDesign Server Rules
We at Silicon Publishing have been working in the database publishing and online editing space for over twenty years, since the very birth of desktop Adobe InDesign, and long before the initial release of InDesign Server in 2005. Currently, we build the largest...
The Rise of “DIY” Publishing
Do it yourself, or DIY, has been part of the American cultural landscape since the 1950s. Based on an individualistic concept with its roots in the very pragmatic (and no doubt ancient) “I can do this myself and save some money” approach, applied initially to home...
Producing Branded Collateral for Real Estate
If you’re in the real estate business, you’re probably part of a large, nationwide association or affiliation that has offices in nearly every state, or your business may be headquartered in just one city, and perhaps you have a few locations — or even just one. In...
Online Editing Comes of Age
Alissa Whitney and I have been building online publishing solutions since the 1990s (and since the year 2000 as Silicon Publishing). But it wasn't until 2009 that we (along with Aaron Hodges, who had recently joined us and immediately lobbied for "a real software...
Updating to the Latest Adobe Creative Cloud while Maintaining Earlier Versions
How do I keep previous versions of an Adobe CC application as I install the new one? What is the trick? On install, uncheck "Remove old versions". That's it! And you'll keep your older versions of InDesign (or Photoshop, or whatever). You can also enable auto-update...