History

While we began as a Los Angeles group, LAIDUG now has members all over the world. We aren’t the Last Adobe InDesign User Group on the planet (note the acronym), but we are the last InDesign-only group in the English-speaking world. (There are three InDesign-only user groups in Germany.)

Although we won’t rule out the occasional face-to-face meeting or field trip, almost all of our events are now virtual and accessible worldwide.

Adobe InDesign was released to the public in August 1999, but it took over two years for InDesign users to join together. That finally happened in New York in November 2001, shortly before the release of the landmark version 2.0. This first InDesign user group brought together early adopters, recent converts, and the merely curious. When news spread of what designers saw and heard, attendance grew.

The Los Angeles InDesign User Group was founded by John Lopez, Andrew Keith Strauss and DeShawn Burton. The first meeting was held in October 2005 at Ogilvy & Mather in Los Angeles-adjacent Culver City. Presenter Mike Riley gave an overview of InDesign CS2.

The group was rebooted in 2010 by Alan Bell and DeShawn Burton with in-person meetings held regularly on a bimonthly basis. Locations varied throughout Los Angeles County to ensure that at least one meeting during the year was in everyone’s backyard. Typical meeting facilities included libraries, community centers and schools. Occasionally meetings were held where design work actually happened—perhaps at a design studio or printing company—and sometimes included a tour of the plant.

In 2015, the Los Angeles InDesign User Group celebrated its 10th anniversary in Hollywood with commendations from local, state and federal officials. David Blatner was the featured speaker.

In 2018, the Feds anointed us with non-profit tax-exempt status.

In 2020, as a result of Covid and with the ubiquity of Zoom, we moved from bimonthly in-person meetings to monthly Zoom meetings. With easy access to meetings from practically anywhere, the membership ballooned, and we sometimes called ourselves the Los Anywhere InDesign User Group, or the Last Adobe InDesign User Group. But we finally settled on using the legacy initials LAIDUG much as KFC did when they decided they were about more than just fried chicken.

Past Field Trips

Bridge Publications
Designory
History for Hire
HPR Graphics
International Printing Museum
Los Angeles Times
Ogilvy & Mather
Roland Corporation