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Adobe website or how to totally bury the Typography group :-(
Posted by dezcom in
21 Nov 2008 — 7:23pm
21 Nov 2008 — 7:23pm
Other than being painfully slower than ever, overly FLASHED, and a pain to navigate, the current Adobe web site makes finding the Type group look playing Where is Waldo blindfolded! Man, I wish they would fix that thing.
Having eventually found the Type group, I bookmarked the page. The easiest way to find it is by typing the URL directly and forgoing traversing The Matrix altogether. Here is the URL, at least it is simple:
ChrisL
PS: I hope the offices Thomas, Miguel, and Christopher work in are easier to find than the web site or else they may never make it to work :-)
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21 Nov 2008 — 7:41pm
A couple of days ago, I followed an old link to one of the Adobe fonts, but the link was dead. I took the briefest of moments to see if I could follow other links on the Adobe website to find the information on the font. When I couldn't find the slightest hint of anything type-related immediately, I just went back to a search engine and found information on the font from elsewhere (not the Adobe site).
Thanks Chris for doing the work for those of us who have the collective attention span of a gnat. They really should fix the navigation if they actually want people to find the Type group page.
21 Nov 2008 — 7:53pm
We've managed to keep our URL the same for about a decade, so bookmarking it is a "good thing": http://www.adobe.com/type/
Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, CJKV Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
lunde@adobe.com
21 Nov 2008 — 7:59pm
Just as I'd never use the SEARCH box on typophile, I wouldn't trust a corporate search service or nav option ;-) I always* google for such things using Live search, and the font pages for Apple, Adobe and Microsoft score pretty high up the list.
Cheers, Si
*exception being Amazon or other shopping sites.
21 Nov 2008 — 7:59pm
I agree though, it's not as well advertised elsewhere on the site as it could be - I have found this frustrating in the past.
21 Nov 2008 — 8:10pm
ChrisL
21 Nov 2008 — 8:12pm
Sorry, Ken, didn't mean to leave you out!
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 10:10am
Ken,
What does CJKV stand for?
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 10:32am
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese
22 Nov 2008 — 10:35am
Seriously, Dan?
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 12:05pm
@lunde: We’ve managed to keep our URL the same for about a decade, so bookmarking it is a “good thing”: http://www.adobe.com/type/
To say nothing of the human face of the Adobe website and publication design's piss poor treatment of typography. Wait a minute, does Adobe even have a human face?
You could have fooled me sir. You could have fooled me.
j a m e s
22 Nov 2008 — 12:55pm
James, I don't think Ken is in charge of the web site. I do agree that Adobe has becoming less human in recent years. Perhaps since Warnock left? This just be a sign of growth--mass times velocity and all...
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 1:13pm
I also hope that type's fall from face does not also mean a fall from grace in the eyes of the annointed at Adobe. Things have a way of following the percentage of revenue a group brings in--the less dough you grow, the more buried you go in their web site.
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 4:35pm
With regard to CJKV, it is indeed as Dan wrote. Look at the cover of my book, specifically along its top edge, for confirmation: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514471/
And James, my comment was merely about the long-term preservation and stability of the URL for type-related things at Adobe, and was not an attempt at evaluating our corporate-wide typographic skills. At one point, several years ago, our URL was changed, and we fought to have it reinstated. It has been stable ever since.
Interestingly, one or two years ago I calculated the average number of years that current Type Development members have been employed at Adobe Systems, and it was twelve (years). The company-wide average was less than two, at least at that time. Now, I am sure that our department average has increased, and it must be thirteen years by now. I have been in Type Development at Adobe Systems for over seventeen years.
Dr. Ken Lunde
Senior Computer Scientist, CJKV Type Development
Adobe Systems Incorporated
lunde@adobe.com
22 Nov 2008 — 4:59pm
Let's hope the Type team has many more years and a greater role in Adobe's future.
ChrisL
22 Nov 2008 — 8:56pm
The Adobe Type Team has several human faces here on Typophile. The InDesign team does as well.
22 Nov 2008 — 9:30pm
While I don’t agree with many of the sentiments above, I do think this thread would be a worthwhile read for the folks behind Adobe.com, and Adobe marketing in general. It’s funny, because every year I get deeper into design, and while I have probably used some Adobe product almost every day for the last decade, I become more detached from Adobe’s products each year.
22 Nov 2008 — 10:35pm
"The Adobe Type Team has several human faces here on Typophile. The InDesign team does as well."
I'll bet you keep one of them close at hand and would surely put him right on your home page :-)
ChrisL