Will Adobe drop InDesign in the near future? With the evolution of digital, Sketch taking over the digital design market, and the rise of Adobe XD, I am wondering how many designers still use InDesign and for which projects? I figure only print, but still curious.
Why would they do that? InDesign is widely used, and print is alive and doing well.
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Nope. Not on a bet.
Every one of my clients uses it (I’m a print vendor.)
What is Sketch? From a print standpoint, it’s a rarely seen format.
(I know what it is, but have a seen a production file created in it? Nope.)
Sketch is for digital design. There’s no way I would ever use it for a print project. It doesn’t cover color separations, trapping, or anything else needed for the printing process. But still yet, I’ve been curious about the trends.
Print isn’t dead.
Never will be.
You at least have to print the boxes your digital devices come in.
Never say never. I get “production files” sent in Powerpoint…
Walk into the grocery store. Look at all the print!
I’ve worked in print, packaging, digital and then some. And yes, I’ve seen and know of some PowerPoint designers that feel it can be used for print (RGB/CMYK isn’t in their vocabulary). Print isn’t dead, but finding designers that know print is a diamond in the rough these days.
I think you just found a bunch. Are you in Ballard, Seattle? Are you looking for a print designer?
I doubt print will ever be dead. But at some point, print package design might be reduced to automated instructional information due to online retailing. You won’t need to sell anything off of a shelf through packaging.
In any case, I can see Adobe eventually merging XD features with InDesign for the same reasons they merged ImageReady features with Photoshop.
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use the right tool for the job.
Merging InDesign with XD would install a bunch of half needed tools into a software that barely works to begin with. They shouldn’t be merged any more than merging InDesign and Photoshop.
Now InD and Illy on the other hand…that I could see as a merge. But if Adobe did it, they would take what was bad about both and combine it, rather than keep the good in InDesign and drop the crap out of Illy.
Print is bigger than it’s ever been, and there are still more print designers than there are available openings for them. I do agree that a good percentage of them are somewhat lacking in the necessary skills, but I don’t agree that finding a good print designer is difficult.
As for Adobe doing away with InDesign, I don’t see the slightest indication of that, and I see no possible reason why they would even consider it. InDesign is the mainstay application of the print world. Neither Sketch nor XD are even remotely positioned to duplicate what InDesign does.
I’m getting the impression that you might have been thinking that InDesign was a good tool for UI/UX design. InDesign is almost exclusively built for print design and production. It never was an appropriate tool for UI design, which is exactly why Adobe has developed better tools for that purpose.
I agree. I wouldn’t suggest that they merged the tools. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
I am from the other side of the country. 
Glad to hear I’m in good company.
Good points! Retail can be a brown box with Amazon’s logo on it eventually. The marketing of items will have to find a better way to stand out digitally. No more wandering the aisles to see the next cool thing. It’s all about what the online retailer wants to show you first.
I should have put that statement in quotes. That’s coming from a principal I know that has his own agency and also from some others that I’ve done business with. They feel a lot of designers today are lacking the knowledge that’s needed for print projects.
Well, it’s definitely a big problem. I don’t think that design schools are adequately preparing students for the business and technical challenges that will face them once they graduate. Instead, way too many schools still tend to concentrate on aesthetics and making cool stuff without seemingly realizing that there are huge practical issues of equal importance.
Both Sketch and Adobe XD are for designing phone apps - they have no relevance to print. Undoubtedly the market for quality phone apps and their design is still growing, and many designers will find work there, but no-one is pretending that this will ever replace print.
Ballard,
Indesign has been the basis of a lot of new apps from Adobe. Muse was created from engineers from Indesign. Now they finished Muse and they will incorporate the muse code in XD. Initially XD was designed to create UX and UI designs, so merely screen devices. I think that dreamweaver will become obsolete not InDesign.
InDesign has been designed as a Layout hub. You start a layout within InDesign and you have multiiple output options, print, pub, app, screen and so on. Those export options still need some tweaking, but they are working on it.Slowly but surely. Have a look at the publish online options in InDesign.
@ Printdriver
I hope that Adobe doesn’t merge Illustrator and Indesign, that would be a nightmare. Something like Coreldraw, where draw options and layout options get entangled in such a way that you get a very, very, very bloated app.
In The end time will tell…
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Hi Carlo. I’ve been following these trends for a very long time and I’m fully aware of the applications and their purposes. I was asking the question because researching about design trends and where things are going really downplays print being used at all these days. It’s all about digital! There are a lot of print vendors that I used that have gone under in the past several years, but the printers that kept themselves afloat are doing extremely well.
This all reminds me of what my mentor told me about the rise of computers in the field of design and how blind designers were to the trend of new technology that took over the industry. It seems that it’s not anything that would happen now, but the stories have a close resemblance.
Sure, things will change al the time, that’s a fact.
Digital publishing will gain a larger market, that’s a fact.
Adobe and other players will change their way of developing tools to achieve that changing market.
So we are in a continuous changing way of looking at things and a continuous learning curve. What makes this job pretty exciting…
Sometines decisions made by companies, like Adobe, are totally nonsense after a certain time. See Flash…
In the end designs are not limited or depended on the software you use. It’s the skills that matter, and the correct tools to achieve this.