The craft · Where we come from
The tools have changed.
Now the way we work is changing.
For thirty-four years I have learned to drive ever more capable software. Sekondo grew out of a question that came with every delivery: how much of this work could I stop doing by hand?
Almost six hundred years
A history of tools.
And of new ways of working.
Gutenberg.
Movable type transforms how text is reproduced across Europe.
The Linotype.
Mechanical typesetting casts whole lines of text in one go.
The Macintosh.
The graphical interface opens the way to desktop publishing.
Photoshop.
Retouching and image compositing find a new digital home.
InDesign.
A new tool widens what digital layout can do.
Creative Cloud.
Adobe moves the development of its apps to subscription.
Generative AI.
With Firefly, image generation arrives inside Adobe’s tools.
Sekondo.
I tell it what I need. It acts inside the document.
Selected milestones in the graphic trade. In chronological order, not to scale.
01 The part I lived
Of this story,
I have lived thirty-four years.
When I started, Photoshop had no layers yet and only one step of undo.
Then came layers, a history you could step back through and new ways of laying out pages. The software changed, we learned other ways of working and we could do things that used to look impossible.
I lived those changes while preparing projects for clients. So when I think about a tool, I think about how it behaves with a real document, with its corrections, its missing files and its deadline.
That is also why one of my first demands when building Sekondo was being able to undo what it does. Trying a solution and being able to go back is part of the work.
02 What was still on my desk
A delivery is still
a lot of small tasks.
Software has got faster and already automates plenty of operations. Even so, preparing every project still takes time, adjustments and checking.
- 40
Photos for an online shop.
Resize, export and name every file by reference, view and size.
- 2
Languages for a catalogue.
Bring in the copy, adjust the layout and check what has moved.
- 13
Formats for a single piece.
Rearrange elements, check every adaptation and prepare the deliveries.
03 The change I propose
From carrying out every step
to directing the work.
With Sekondo I can say what I need and have the tool act inside the document.
My job shifts to setting the direction, reviewing the result and deciding what works. The judgement is still mine, and so is the responsibility for what I deliver.
That is where I see a before and after: spending less time carrying out operations and more time thinking about what I want them to achieve.
Until now, I carried out the instructions inside the software. With Sekondo, I can give them.
Sources for the timeline
- Gutenberg: the movable-type printing system
- Smithsonian: the invention of the Linotype, 1886
- Apple: Macintosh 128K, introduced in 1984
- Adobe: Photoshop, 1990
- Adobe: InDesign, 1999
- Adobe: the move to Creative Cloud in 2013
- Adobe: the Firefly announcement, 2023
More time for ideas. More room to create.
For me, that is what Sekondo is for: a tool born from my own deliveries, so other creatives get that time back too.
