Is InDesign the MS Word?

The Fenixworkshop Blog carries a piece that voices something we’ve seen so much of lately both through our recruitment and training clients, that just seems to be growing…

“In the last year or two many office support staffers are being required to learn InDesign, as budgets tighten and companies no longer want to outsource work to freelance designers. Employees with little or no design training are being required to navigate the complexities of typography and information architecture and create publications that look professionally designed.” Full post here

However, we’ve seen this not just with InDesign/QuarkXPress, but the whole range of creative applications. Adobe has long used the word “ubiquity” to describe the prevalence of Adobe Acrobat – but I’d say we’re pretty damn close to applying “ubiquity” to the print/web product-set as a whole.

I’d disagree that “companies no longer want to outsource work to freelance designers” but would say that companies are now using junior staff to tweak/edit/adjust the work done by designers. Whether this is the office admin or marketing exec tweaking web copy or nudging a graphic on a brochure, the creative tools once only to be found on the Mac in the corner of the design dept, are now well and truly established elsewhere.

But we all know the dangers of asking a non-designer to design something, but the lines are starting to blur as with so many traditional job roles and titles: tech authors becoming copywriters; copywriters becoming graphic designers; or print designer becoming web designer etc

InDesign is the new Microsoft Word – Carol’s going to love that!