2000 was the peak year for Adobe’s website. It was a content site filled with creative how-to articles, opinion pieces, and artist interviews where you could also, if you wished, buy or get info on Adobe products.
Now this is how you create a product site for a suite of creative products, I told myself as both a fan of the site and a writer for it. Alas, adobe.com did not share my assessment. They soon reverted to a more typical product site: all product selling; no articles, features, or interviews. Everything for the company and nothing for the readers.
My friend Brian Alvey and I believed that brands like Adobe would step in to fill the void left by the fracturing and diminution of the publishing and newspaper industries. Alas, few brands jumped at this opportunity, and the destruction of publishing and journalism continues to this day.
As a published author, former columnist for The Washington Post and City Paper, and former publisher of perfectly pitched books (A Book Apart), I say this with great sadness. The pursuit of money above all else has done the world great harm, and yet it continues, grinding ever harder, ever faster.
