…and Other News of DesignStudio, Letraset, and Others
Letraset, DesignStudio, and Ready,Set,Go have been prominent in the news recently. Considering the nature and the magnitude of the changes facing both the company and its products, we felt a review of the events of the last few months would be in order.
The Macworld Review
The November issue of Macworld ran a review of DesignStudio by Steve Roth which was so far off base that many readers wrote to complain. Here are a few excerpts from over 20 pages of comments posted on America Online.
As usual, Macworld magazine has shown its true QuarkXpress/PageMaker-biased colors. And the lack of Letraset ad dollars in their magazine means a biased review also. But this time they’ve gone too far. The amount of incorrect statements and information is appalling… Here are a few of the wonderfully inaccurate statements that can be found on page 212 of the November issue of Macworld:
1] Hyphenation and Justification apply to whole documents only (In DS, both H & J can be applied to a single word, line, paragraph, selection, etc., and it doesn’t apply to the whole document.)
2] A five-step process to put text or graphics on a page (Now if he had only read that quick reference card: Holding down the command key while drawing either a text or picture block brings it up already selected for importing.)
3] You can “now” position page elements either manually or numerically (this was even available in RSG!).
4] Also new are object locking, nonprinting... (Again, even RSG had these features as well as DS1!)
5] DS2’s typesetting controls are not up to the level of PageMaker 4.0. (Who are they kidding, anyway?)
6] Find and Change are competent but not brilliant—you can search for and apply styles but “no” other attributes. (You can search and replace virtually every attribute, including font, size, style sheet, returns, tabs, etc.)
7] DesignStudio’s ability to rotate text and graphics in 1/10-degree is impressive, but not as impressive as QuarkXpress’, which even lets you edit text in its rotated position—DesignStudio automatically rotates the text to horizontal for editing, then rotates it back when you’re done. (Gee, and I thought DS2’s implementation was a “feature.” Silly me, I’d much rather stand on my head to edit text in Xpress that’s been rotated 180 degrees!)
8] DS’s new color capabilities are very good, but not as good as the capabilities of QuarkXpress or the PageMaker-Aldus PrePrint duo (Hey Steve, did you try printing with all three to see which program gave you the best separations? True, DS2 has not yet implemented trapping, but that’s around the corner. The separator annex is basically the same as in ColorStudio.)
9] ...but don’t build your studio around DesignStudio (What a ridiculous statement to end an erroneous article. I am one of thousands of happy DS users who have built their studios around DesignStudio, happily and successfully.)
Steve Roth, this is an open challenge to back up your incompetent article by proving to me that your nine blunders above are true. And that was basically a one-page review. Thank God you weren’t given five pages!
Jim Harris
Harris Graphic Design
Santa Rosa, CA
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The review of DesignStudio which appeared in the November 1991 issue of Macworld is irresponsible and misleading. There are many mistakes and inaccuracies—almost more inaccurate statements than accurate ones.
DesignStudio is one of the page layout programs taught at The Savannah College of Art and Design, and it performs capably. Even students in my Introduction to Desktop Publishing class would find a wealth of flaws in your review.
Your reviewer apparently didn’t even read Letraset’s feature list, much less the manual or reference sheet. Here are corrections to a few of his mistakes:
• DesignStudio’s Find and Change can search on any combination of type attributes, not just styles.
• Individual text selections can have their word spacing adjusted, not just the whole document.
• Text can be tinted to any percentage, not just in 10% increments.
• Solid shapes can be tinted in 10% increments, or with forty different patterns. (Quark only shows 10% increments for its line and box tints, too.)
• DesignStudio’s stylesheets are more flexible than either PageMaker’s or Quark’s, which only allow for one style per paragraph.
• It doesn’t take me five steps to put text or graphics on the page.
• Furthermore, I wouldn’t want to edit rotated text while standing on my head, as Quark forces me to do.
Please try to do a better job with reviews. This kind of performance makes all of your reviews seem questionable.
Jim Alley
Professor of Computer Art
The Savannah College of Art and Design
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I find it amazing how much editorial space and adulation it seems a product can receive with advertising dollars. For example: each time PageMaker and Xpress announce they may be providing a minor upgrade within one year, Macworld seems to devote reviews, speculations, and news leading up to the release of that minor upgrade. The minute the upgrade is available, Macworld seems to devote major reviews and considerate features about each program.
Then along comes Design Studio—a superior product provided by a company with an apparent lack of marketing skills or advertising dollars. Almost nine months after a “major” upgrade of Design Studio, Macworld decides to run a short review of the program by an author who seemingly never used the program.
Steve Roth’s review contained so many serious errors and misstatements I had to double check to see if he hadn’t reviewed the wrong program by mistake. Not only that, he spent much of his review of Design Studio promoting the features of PageMaker and QuarkXPress, rather than discussing the features of Design Studio.
Brent A. Duncan
Real Presentations
La Selva Beach, CA
PS...
In case this stuff is ignored by MW, I have sent a version of my previous post directly to Macworld. Macworld has suffered a severe credibility loss at the expense of Mr. Roth’s incompetence. I’m interested to see whether you folks are interested in providing honest, credible editorial copy.
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The real test here is to see what position is taken by Macworld in response to an obviously incorrect, misleading, inept review. Now we’ll see who’s getting the payola, won’t we Macworld?
Sal Soghoian
Design Express
P.O. Box 6385
Charlottesville, VA 22906
Macworld’s Response
As of the January issue, none of the letters to the editor had been printed in the magazine. In the January issue, the “Corrections” column admitted to a handful of errors in the review. If you look carefully, you’ll find it on page 43 of that issue. (I paged through the entire issue twice before locating it.)
In the February issue—finally—a few letters appeared in the magazine. These were ruthlessly cut so that each person seemed to have one or two minor points of contention. I have read the originals of several of these letters—indeed, I wrote one myself—and I can assure you that each of the letters made a number of points, several of which have still yet to be answered by Macworld.
Instead, Macworld’s reviewer responded with statements like the following: “I consider QuarkXPress’s ability to rotate in .001 increments better than DesignStudio’s .1 increment.” (Can you tell the difference between .001 and .1 of a degree? He neglects to point out that PageMaker is limited to 90° increments.) Or, “DesignStudio doesn’t offer the trapping control of QuarkXPress.” But again, he neglects to mention that PageMaker doesn’t have this feature either.
Another Magazine’s View
At about the same time as the questionable review was being published, DesignStudio was being nominated as the best page design program of the year by the editors of MacUser. How can one magazine think a program is the worst in its class and another magazine nominate it as best in its class?
The Future of DesignStudio and Ready,Set,Go
In the midst of all of the previous news, Letraset announced that it was turning development and support of Ready,Set,Go and DesignStudio back to Manhattan Graphics, the company that originally wrote and distributed Ready,Set,Go. It should be noted here that Manhattan Graphics’ Ready,Set,Go was not only the first page layout program to appear for the Macintosh, it was also the first to bring out major new features, such as runaround graphics and rotated text.
Manhattan Graphics will be making some changes immediately. By the time you read this, DesignStudio will have ceased to exist. In its place will be Ready,Set,Go 5.0. This product will essentially be DesignStudio 2.0 and Ready,Set,Go rolled into one, with several bug fixes (correct printing to the new Apple LaserWriter IIf and IIg, as well as the ability to print on QuickDraw printers). Although the program will be able to run in 32-bit mode, it will not be “System 7 savvy.”
RSG 5.0 will retail for $395 and will be packaged with DesignScript (renamed ReadyScript) and the Color Separator. The new program will open documents created by all versions of Ready,Set,Go and DesignStudio. Upgrade prices will be as follows:
From RSG 1, 2, 3, 4 $89.95
From RSG 4.5 $69.95
From Design Studio 1.0 $49.95
From Design Studio 2.0 $29.95
Another option for DesignStudio 2.0 owners (only) is to get the disk set (no manuals) for only $9.95. There will also be site licences and foreign language versions available soon.
Those interested in upgrading should call Manhattan Graphics at 1-800-572-6533 in order to get on the upgrade list. Have your serial number ready. Current plans are for the program to be released the second week of February.
Hopefully, merging both products (reported to have a combined installed base of 100,000 users!) will allow Manhattan Graphics to succeed where Letraset failed. Manhattan Graphics is actively seeking user feedback on its products.
Whither Letraset?
Letraset is a part of Esselte, a $50 billion concern with deep roots in the graphic design business. Letraset also has close ties with Pantone (the industry standard for color matching), ITC (International Typeface Corporation, father of all of those ITC typefaces you see in Adobe catalogs and elsewhere), and others.
The company is known for having made some serious blunders in marketing its digital products. At its first release, LetraStudio was hampered by an awkward copy protection scheme. ColorStudio first appeared at well over twice the price of its competition. And we’ve seen that the company simply let its page layout programs wither on the vine.
Presumably Letraset believes that FontStudio, ColorStudio, and LetraStudio represent their best interests in the field of electronic design. And Letraset is bringing out a whole new line of digital typefaces, based on their well-known rub-on typefaces. Hopefully they have learned from their mistakes in the field and will aggressively develop and maintain a reasonably-priced, high-quality line of products.
For now, users of Ready,Set,Go and DesignStudio should watch carefully the progress of the small company that brought the Mac world its first page layout program, a program that many feel is still the best. DesignStudio is dead. Long live Ready,Set,Go!
America Online members might want to check out Letraset’s special offers on ColorTag and the new FonTek line of digital typefaces. Look for Letraset in the Industry Connection forum. Also, be sure to watch for a new forum for Manhattan Graphics in the near future.
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The article above is reprinted from Mac Monitor, the newsletter of The Savannah Macintosh Users Group. It may be reprinted in a single issue of newsletters published by non-profit user groups. Payment shall consist of a single issue of the newsletter in which the article appears, sent to the following address:
