InDesign cracks more than half the layout traffic in Australia

The shock result comes as the battle rages between Adobe and Quark for the desktops, hearts, and minds of the industry. Less than two years after Adobe introduced its bundled Creative Suite (CS) – PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat and InDesign – it appears InDesign is poised to topple Quark as the standard industry page-maker program.

According to the study 60.8 per cent of respondents said the majority of their files were now created using InDesign. Of those not using InDesign at work, almost half (47 per cent) said they expect to purchase the software within the next 12 months.

More than half of all respondents (including non-InDesign users) said they now use InDesign as their major page layout software. 88.4 per cent (9 out of 10) respondents indicated that at some time at work they would use Adobe’s page layout software, InDesign (any version).

The independent survey conducted by GASAA of over 350 leading advertising and design agencies, in-house corporate firms, service providers and publishers showed 79.9 per cent of respondents use InDesign CS.

(Some caution should be exercised when reading the results in that much of the usage of InDesign involves ‘traffic’ between service providers, i.e. prepress houses and printers, rather than creation. Ed)


According to GASAA’s Executive Officer, Garry Knespal “the results of our InDesign Usage survey are consistent with anecdotal information available to the association and sales trends from the GASAA webstore. All three indicate a growing and significant use of Adobe InDesign by the professional graphic arts market.

“The high usage of InDesign CS is particularly interesting, given its relatively recent availability in Australia (September 2003). In the four years since InDesign 1.0 was released in the region nine out ten professionals (88.4 per cent), according to our survey, now have InDesign available at work”, he said.

Knespal maintains that part of the reason why InDesign has it over Quark is due to the pricing of XPress upgrades from version 4.0 to 6.0. He points out that when there was a special upgrade offer for a limited period at around $400, “we ran out of product very fast.” He believes the current upgrade price of $979 is too expensive.

“While other important page layout software are used by a proportion of the market place, GASAA - and other education and information providers – need to ensure they are able to fully support the growing importance of InDesign as a professional production tool”, said Knespal.

A free copy of survey report is available from the GASAA website at www.gasaa.asn.au/surveyresults.asp

or by calling 1300 131 787.