Tony Brightman and the developers wanted to create something new that was world class and world beating.
#PHOTOSTACK SERIF PROFESSIONAL#
“We decided that we wanted to change tack, to start to develop and create a whole new range of applications for professional use.
PagePlus was a very capable desktop publishing application, but we aimed it at people creating things like greeting cards or newsletters for the local golf club, for users who didn’t necessarily have any particular design or print expertise. “The legacy applications were focused towards the home user or the small office user. “We refer toward those products as our legacy applications, because around eight or nine years ago we decided to set off on a different path,” says Hewson. Serif maintains support forums for all the others.
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You can still download and purchase PagePlus, PhotoPlus and DrawPlus for £19.99 each, but they are no longer updated. “Over the years we built up a suite of creative products, including DrawPlus, for vector graphics, PhotoPlus for photo editing, MoviePlus and WebPlus.” There was also PhotoStack for asset management and CraftArtist for paper craft designs. “It was the first desktop publishing app available for less than 100 dollars,” says Hewson. Serif’s first product, PagePlus, was launched in 1990. I look mostly on the sales and the marketing and business development side of the company.” Tony is the main brains behind all of the development and the strategy for the products.
#PHOTOSTACK SERIF DRIVERS#
Hewson says “The main drivers today are Tony Brightman and me. Today only one of the original three developers is still with Serif, Jim Bryce, who remains a director.
Serif was first set up in 1987 by a group of friends who had been at Nottingham University together. It meant I know the business inside out, through working in all areas and dealing with the customers.” Then I become call centre manager, then head of operations and one way or another worked up to become managing director as I am today. After 18 months I became a trainer and then a data analyst, working on marketing. The first job I had in 1998 was with Serif, in the call centre. “I dropped out after a couple of years and went to a job agency. “I’m originally from Kent and I came to Nottingham University to do electronic engineering,” he recalls. His is a classic story of working his way up through the company. The new Designer for iPad app was introduced at the event.Īshley Hewson has been managing director for the past five years.
This past summer after a lot of building work it opened a large new demonstration and training space designed by Serif’s creative director Neil Ladkin, launching it with the first Affinity Live event in July. Turnover last year was £13m, up from £9.7m the previous year. The company now employs about 75 people, all working in its Nottingham office. About 150,000 Betas have been downloaded. This allows CMYK working, has extensive typography tools and outputs PDFs up to PDF/X-4. This autumn Serif released the public Beta of Affinity Publisher, a professional layout program, which will be released early in 2019. Downloads of these passed a million this summer. Serif’s current Affinity range includes Designer, a vector drawing equivalent to Adobe Illustrator, and Photo, a Photoshop equivalent. Today it’s pitching its Affinity range as high performance, perpetual-license alternatives to the print-related components of Adobe’s dominant but subscription-only Creative Cloud suite.