Aldus

Aldus Corporation was a software company that developed desktop publishing (DTP) software. It is known for developing PageMaker, an early product in the desktop publishing field. The company is named after 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, and was founded by Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, Dave Walter, and chairman Paul Brainerd. Aldus Corporation was based in Seattle, Washington.

History

PageMaker was released in July 1985 and relied on Adobe's PostScript page description language. For output, it used the Apple LaserWriter, a PostScript laser printer. PageMaker for the PC was released in 1986, but by then the Mac was the de facto DTP platform, with Adobe Illustrator (released in 1987) and Adobe Photoshop (released in 1990) completing the suite of graphic design software.

Aldus went on to offer its Illustrator-like program FreeHand, licensed from Altsys (who also developed Fontographer). FreeHand and Illustrator competed with each other for years through multiple releases. This rivalry continued even after the Aldus acquisition, because FreeHand was not included, but Adobe eventually acquired Freehand in 2005 with its acquisition of Macromedia. FreeHand MX was the last version offered by Adobe but is no longer sold or updated.

Aldus (typeface)

Aldus is an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf in 1954. It is named for Aldus Manutius, the famous fifteenth-century Venetian printer.

Aldus was designed as a book weight text face companion for Palatino, which Zapf considered to be a display typeface. Aldus (which Zapf wished to be called Palatino Book) is designed to complement Palatino, but with a lighter stroke weight, more open counters, and better suited for text in smaller point sizes. Aldus has a non-kerning roman and italic f, allowing the typographer to avoid ligatures.

Aldus nova

Aldus nova was also designed by Hermann Zapf, with Akira Kobayashi (born 1960). A bold weight is added into the font family. The character set support is similar to Palatino nova, but Greek and Cyrillic are not available in book weight fonts. The bar in ampersand is only available in book roman font.

References