Hearst Magazines Adopt Adobe's Publishing Platform

July 06, 2004

Adobe Systems has announced that Hearst Magazines, one of the world's largest magazine publishers with 18 U.S. titles and more than 137 international editions, has adopted the Adobe(R) Creative Suite, which includes Adobe InDesign(R) CS software, as its standard publishing solution. A color-managed, all-digital internal prepress and publishing workflow based on the Adobe InDesign CS and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) has resulted in reduced design and production time, quality enhancements, and substantial cost savings for Hearst, which has moved five of its top titles -- include Cosmopolitan, Popular Mechanics, Marie Claire, House Beautiful and Shop Etc., a new monthly magazine that will hit newsstands in August 2004 -- to a new workflow based on Adobe's publishing platform. The company expects to convert its remaining titles by 2005.

"Hearst Magazines is a publishing innovator, with some of the world's most recognized and respected magazine brands," said Jim Heeger, senior vice president of Creative Professional products at Adobe. "We've worked closely with the Hearst team to ensure that the Adobe Creative Suite -- which includes InDesign CS for layout and design -- does justice to the household-name titles that now rely on Adobe technology."

"In addition to implementing a color-managed workflow and bringing prepress in-house, Hearst Magazines is leveraging the capabilities of Adobe PDF and InDesign CS to become more competitive," said Ellen Payne, director of editorial operations for Hearst Magazines. "Moving to InDesign CS has made it easier for our magazines to do their own prepress. We are saving significant amounts of time and money in design and production, while enhancing the quality of our magazine titles -- making them even more enjoyable for our readers."

Hearst needed a system that would allow designers to work with high-resolution images and artwork in layouts and at the same time offer a smoother transition to an all-digital PDF workflow. Designers and production staff needed to view accurately effects such as drop shadows and transparency in page layouts on their computer screens. Using the previous system, designers had to send files to a prepress service provider to create effects and send back proofs, a costly process that caused several days of delay and encroached on designers' ability to make timely creative decisions. When magazine publishers like Hearst engage the services of a prepress vendor for production of each monthly issue, expenses can mount to millions of dollars each year, a cost that can be dramatically reduced by enabling designers to view and edit effects on their computer displays and by bringing other prepress processes in-house.

The new system using InDesign CS is streamlining design and production at Hearst Magazines. The software provides smooth integration with Adobe PDF, enabling the company to transition to a completely digital prepress and publishing workflow. Integration among Adobe Creative Suite components -- Adobe Illustrator(R) CS, Photoshop(R) CS, and InDesign CS -- allows designers to combine high-resolution artwork and images and other elements of a magazine page more efficiently. They can use InDesign CS to create effects with greater control and view the effects on-screen as they will appear in print. Because designers have more control over effects, there are fewer errors and page designs print as designers intended.

At the same time that designers are creating pages, imaging specialists at Hearst are scanning, correcting color, and retouching photos. Production staff then creates an Adobe PDF file and prints a contract proof. By converting magazine layouts to Adobe PDF, Hearst can ensure that fonts, colors, image formats, and print settings within the file are correct, reducing printing errors. Once a contract proof is created and approved, pre-media specialists validate the Adobe PDF file and deliver it to the printer for output. Due to the integration with Adobe PDF and Adobe Creative Suite, Hearst is realizing efficiency gains across its workflow, starting with the generation of initial layouts and finishing with final output.