For 25 years, Adobe Systems Inc. has pushed publishing and printing boundaries to the limits. With their proprietary PDF format, computer scientists John Warnock and Charles Geschke have established a company that has become the software provider of choice for a wide range of industries.

Before founding Adobe Systems, Inc. in 1982, both men worked at the prominent Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the late 1970’s. The inspiration to create Adobe came from the research they conducted on device-independent graphic systems and printers. Their goal as technological innovators was to translate digital text and images onscreen accurately onto the printed page. This idea would be the motivating force behind Adobe’s constant innovation and re-invention of technology.

Thus, forming a new company, they further explored the possibilities of graphics and print, ultimately developing the device-independent page description language they called Post Script. The scripting language provided a practical alternative to the restrictions and complexities of the print publishing industry.

As Adobe Systems Inc.’s first product on the market in 1984, Adobe PostScript was soon followed by Adobe’s other graphic technologies at the time, Illustrator, Photoshop and Type Manager. By the late 80’s and early 90’s, digital documentation and work systems were quickly progressing, and their graphic and print technologies were revolutionizing the print industry as a modern publishing workflow. The growing success of their technologies would establish the company as a reliable and high quality solutions provider.

Adobe further refined their Post Script language, and designed a file format that was based on Post Script technology: the PDF format. Along with this new format, Adobe also released Adobe Acrobat in mid June of 1993. Over the next decade, both the PDF and Acrobat would gain financial success on the market with each subsequent version and become Adobe’s hallmark technology.

In the mid-1990’s and onwards, Adobe authored a number of products with its growing expansion of customer solutions and acquired technologies. Today, Adobe provides a number of quality software for creative, enterprise and developer, and mobile solutions, such as Adobe Creative Suite, Flex, and Reader LE. Its major acquisitions, which include Aldus (1994), GoLive (1999), Accelio (2002), and its most recent one, Macromedia, Inc. (2005), have all contributed to the advanced versatility contained in its flagship products.

In addition, the company has also gone through internal changes. In 2000, Warnock and Geschke, co-founders of an growing 18-year old company, assumed the positions of co-chairmen of the board. Since then, Adobe has been under the leadership of CEO Bruce Chizen. In 2002, he successfully led the company through the marketing and financial transition of providing enterprise platform technology, in addition to its already popular desktop software.

On the community level, Adobe continues to develop and support user groups, forums and communities on their website that use and share in the same technologies. Designers, developers, users, educators and partners—Adobe continues to design and develop with the end user in mind and for the community of users it has built.

Although based in San Jose , California , Adobe is also an international success. The company has several office branches in each of Europe , Asia , South America , and one in Australia . Their Reader software has been translated into more than 26 languages, and comes preinstalled on PCs made by the top ten computer manufacturers in the world.

Charles Geschke and John Warnock created not only a company in 1982, they created an industry. Undeniably, their vision for graphics and publishing has permanently changed the way in which people communicate and create on a digital level.