Adobe is 40! – Photofocus

Raise your hand if you’ve been using an Adobe product for 40 years!

Seriously, we’d love to know what you used and what products you’re still using. Let us know in the comments below.

While you are doing that, we’ll share some history of Adobe, milestones and some tidbits you may not have ever heard before.

The impact of Adobe

Adobe innovations over the past four decades have touched billions of people all around the world. They have inspired us to create and share our work and to learn and grow along the way.

Adobe products impact so many aspects of our society that we might not even realize or think about. From investing in desktop publishing to revolutionizing imaging and design. They have pioneered electronic documents and advanced animation, gaming and video. From leading 3D, digital marketing and commerce and now with Adobe Express, everyone from small businesses to solopreneurs to students can easily and quickly design anything. They have continued to empower everyone, everywhere to imagine, create and bring any digital experience to life.

The founders and beginnings

The founders, John Warnock and Charles Geschke maintained that “great ideas come from everywhere in the company.” This philosophy still rings true. Through Adobe’s innovation, they have empowered billions of people to change the world in big and small ways, inside and outside the company.

• Adobe was named after the Adobe Creek that ran behind John Warnock’s home.
• Their logo, the stylized ‘A’ was designed by John Warnock’s wife Marva.
• Adobe’s very first system was PostScript, a programming language that describes the appearance of a printed page. It has become an industry standard for printing and imaging. It was a breakthrough product because of how it handled fonts. PostScript was able to generate fonts of any size and shape from mathematical descriptions and do so automatically on the fly. Today, everywhere you look — from magazines to billboards — you see a PostScript font in use.
• Designed as the first Adobe Originals typeface by Robert Slimbach in 1989. Adobe Garamond is based upon the typefaces first created by the famed French printer Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century.

See the entire blog post and more fun facts about Adobe throughout the years here.

The next generation

At Adobe, their experience and success don’t define them. It encourages them to continue to innovate in the face of an unpredictable and ever-changing world.

They have always been committed to building a company that does the right thing by focusing on people, purpose and community. These core set of values and tremendous global impacts are what have guided Adobe’s evolution and growth and what continue to inspire their over 27,000 employees around the world to focus on having more impact and inventing the future.

Adobe’s 40 years of experience makes them more qualified to help those who are changing the world through digital experiences. They are so honored to have been on this journey and look forward to what the next 40 years have in store.

Happy Birthday, Adobe!