Until just over a decade ago, publishing was largely a series of manual tasks and processes. The tools were typewriters, cameras, drawing boards, pens, rulers, adhesive tape and scalpels. Artwork for magazines, newspapers, books and brochures was assembled by hand, or with the aid of expensive computerised machines that helped in scanning and arranging type. The process was laborious, time consuming and costly.

In the mid ’80s, desktop publishing (DTP) began a phenomenal revolution that would completely change the face of printing and publishing. Simple, user-friendly software replaced manual techniques for composing and editing text, images and page layout. Processes that had previously taken days, or weeks, requiring the combined skills of a variety of tradespeople, could be accomplished in only a few hours, using an affordable desktop computer and off-the-shelf software.

In the 10 or so years since its introduction, DTP has replaced virtually all publishing and printing-related creation and preparation processes around the world. DTP has brought major advances to the publishing industry, extending it from a specialised trade into millions of offices and art studios. DTP has eliminated augmented or merged most of the traditional trade skills, reducing the modern publishing model to a three-step process: creation, preparation and printing.

It is not unusual to find two, or all, of these processes combined under the one roof: a printer may offer preparation facilities; a large art department may create and prepare material for printing; or, in the case of large publishers, the entire process is combined.