If it can be automated, it will be, or at least people paying for it will really, really try. Designers must have seen that this is the direction that desktop work has gone, though I don't think it will go fully into XML or the like all that soon. Many people have more powerful design/prepress departments in their living rooms and on their laptops than there used to be in many printing plants a mere decade ago. This addition of responsibility to designing will get merged into automation if corporations have anything to do with it. People are getting conditioned to (relatively) compromised or homogenized design by looking at full-featured web sites (such as Amazon), and it's not far off to think that basically functional design, such as templates, paired with XML will win in most cases over a superior, more customized aesthetic. Dollars drive things, like it or not. There will always be room for free-form work, but I think the pool will be smaller.

I know Gene, and we have discussed these issues before, so I can't pretend to be writing just out of the blue. Needless to say, I agree strongly with most of what he's written here. Just a few points:

1. I think you are missing an important distinction when you write that "there may never be a 'final' version of anything." Yes, more and more information will appear on the Web, and the Web only -- no print equivalent. Most frequently that information will change frequently, often dynamically. And with variable data printing there will be far greater variations in much of what is printed. But there will still be books and magazines printed in large quantities, where a single piece (or collection) of content appears in a single form to a large body of readers -- where customization would not add value. Here too, though, I believe that the layout will be automated, and based on templates designed and "engineered" by designers. I now refer to the future of page design as "document engineering", not to diminish the importance of good design, but to recognize how much engineering will be required to make a document work, both from an information architecture aspect, as well as from the demands of the new tool sets that will be employed.

2. What is often unappreciated is that these changes are not being driven by techno-fascists seeking to eradicate the role of the designer. These changes are driven by sheer economics. The Internet has changed the perception of the value of written content. When so much can be obtained for free (or nearly free), the $50 book seems less and less appealing. Publishers are being driven to reduce the cost of composing and printing and distributing their books, and automated page layout can knock about 10% off the total PP&B (paper, print & bind) costs of a book.

The Internet has also radically changed peoples' perceptions of timeliness. Books can no longer move through languid production schedules, full of out of date by the time they appear. The future of book publishing is fast to market, short runs, revise often.

3. I think that several of the responses you've received miss the point you're making about design. The design role will be at least as important in the future as it is today. It's only that the tools and the process of design will change, and very drastically. This will not lead to ugly and dull designs -- but it will mark the end of frivilous design -- design for design's sake -- that is all too common today. Today's desktop tools are so much more powerful than the manual tools they replaced, making it a cinch for designers to throw even the kitchen sink onto a page. The best designers resist the temptation, but all too many go too far. This adds costs without adding value.

As design moves towards automated production, it will force design back to it's fundamentals -- structured, formalized, and optimized for readability.

Again, this is not to say that there won't be many publications (and other printed pieces or electronic page views) where free-form design can be celebrated. It's just that free-form design does not suit the reader of the average book or periodical.

Anway...great article, Gene!

I've been in catalog production for 20 years. I can remember when back in the 90s the big breakthrough was "on demand" printing. No longer would catalogers mail out mass quantities of generic catalogs, now they could build individual catalogs targeting specific products just for you, based on previous order history, locale, etc. This was going to greatly affect the catolog industry as we knew it back then. I don't know about everyone else, but my mailbox still gets stuffed year-round with catalogs, and they all are the same as the one (or three) my neighbor got as well. While some of the elements discussed in this article are happening, and others will happen, I don't see it changing everything as drastically as proclaimed. So I don't think I'm going to trash my copy of Quark just yet. Don't forget, TV was going to be the death of radio, but as far as I know every car stilll comes with one.