(July 14, 2006) - Development and Design are two sides of the same coin in the digital age, and it is very nice to consider in any case how well these two formerly separate worlds have come together over the past two decades.

 Adobe was at the forefront from the beginning, with its Postscript Fonts. Based on earlier work by Adobe co-founder John Warnock at Xerox PARC and Evans and Sutherland, Postscript was integral to the Apple LaserWriter, hooked to an Apple Macintosh, all announced in 1984.

A developer friend of mine showed me back then how the Mac could deal with typefaces in an incredibly flexible and breathtakingly fast new way back then. He was no designer, though, and could only produce work that looked like crude ransom notes. "Having these tools doesn't necessarily encourage good taste," as he put it.

But having these tools did encourage good taste among those who had it. The revolution was on.

Readers of this magazine with 20+ years of experience will remember an era of xacto knives, border tape, and glue. They will remember production departments full of "galley slaves" who took extreme pride in their ability to work precisely, cleverly, and quickly.

They may also remember the fear and trepidation caused by the first digital design systems, especially when those systems came in something as innocuous-looking as a Mac. They may remember management edicts for even more "efficiency," ie, layoffs. The computers were going to take their jobs!

Younger readers may sneer at all this, thinking that I'm describing the late 19th century rather than the late 20th century. Their mindset is most likely one that embraces change, because their world has seen nothing but a steady upward rise in the capability of systems, a steady downward fall in the price of these systems, and the daily expectation that something new and really cool is going to be created.

Although the old folks' stories may be interesting in the way that 78rpm records are interesting, the young folks are the ones who are spot on. And the good news is that most of the old folks have been embracing the technology enthusiastically for many years now as well.

The fear of losing your job to the computer is no longer a fear experienced by designers. My developer friend still has a job, and today is building Web 2.0 experiences with a combination of tools. He still lets the real designers do most of the front-end, but he doesn't so much hand off his work as collaborate with other team members.

If anything, the melding of the development and design worlds, again led in no small part by Adobe, provides new opportunities for anyone who is willing to listen, to learn, and to create something new and really cool.

Read this magazine, and you'll see what I mean.