Adobe founders' win printing champions awards

Dr John Warnock and Dr Charles (Chuck) Geschke, co-founders of Adobe Systems, have received the global Ipex 2010 Champions in Print awards.

The awards are said to be for their contributions that have influenced and shaped the development of the printing industry.

The Ipex Advisory Committee, which represents a range of major exhibitors at the show, visitor groups and trade associations, has awarded the accolade in recognition of the roles they played in inventing Adobe PostScript technology, which revolutionised desktop publishing by providing a new approach to printing text and images on paper.

John Warnock said: 'When Chuck and I founded Adobe in 1982, we hoped our technology would have the potential to make an important contribution to the communication of ideas.

But if anyone had told us it would be part of revolutionising the printing and publishing industries, we would have been sceptical.

We were fortunate in that we have always hired bright and creative people at Adobe.

I'm proud to say that Adobe has been built on the legacy that has continued to revolutionise how the world engages with ideas and information, whether in print, on the web and across all manner of devices.

Chuck Geschke commented: 'The revolution that began as desktop publishing in the late 1980s changed the cost, productivity and efficiency of an industry without compromising the 500 years of the traditional aesthetics and quality of the printing trade.

Geschke and Warnock met in the late 1970s at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre, where Geschke directed research activities in computer science, graphics, image processing and optics, and Warnock worked as a principal scientist.

The pair went on to set up Adobe Systems in 1982 and launched PostScript, which enabled content from a computer file to be printed exactly as it appeared on screen, with all formatting, graphics and fonts intact.

Building on the success of PostScript, their company expanded into desktop publishing software with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

These applications enabled designers to create and manipulate complex images and graphics for print.

Later on, the launch of Adobe InDesign redefined page layout for publications, allowing many magazines, newspapers and corporate brands to adopt modern production workflows.

The development of Adobe Acrobat software, and the Portable Document Format (PDF), helped advance the printing industry further by enabling the use of electronic files for high-fidelity printing.

There will be 10 Champions in Print in the run-up to Ipex 2010, which will take place from 18-25 May at the NEC, Birmingham, UK.

The first three winners were Indigo founder and industry pioneer Benny Landa, J K Rowling, author of the top-selling Harry Potter novels, and Professor Frank Romano at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ipex 2010 event director, Trevor Crawford, said: 'The sheer number of nominations that Dr Geschke and Dr Warnock have received since the launch of the Champions in Print awards is testament to the impact they've had on our industry.

Both had a vision for publishing and graphic arts which has forever changed how people create and engage with information.

'.

Back to top