Press Quotes

"If you are an avid PageMaker or FreeHand user, here are two extensions that will quickly move to the top of your "most useful" list."

— Darryl Gordon, Software Reviews, San Diego Computer Journal, Sept 1992

"Palatable offering: Zephyr Palettes is a clever utility for PageMaker and FreeHand that eliminates endless trips to the Type menu."

— Aileen Abernathy, MacUser Magazine, May 1992

"…after you use them for a while they are increasingly hard to live without."

— Gerald W. Lange, Master Printer, USC Fine Arts Press, Random Access, vol VI, no. 5, April/May 1993, re: Zephyr Palettes

Smart Align and Super Snap…
"Olav Martin Kvern calls them two of the best Additions on the market."

— Design Tools Monthly, vol 2, no. 9, Sept 1993

"All of Zephyr Designs Additions ease bottlenecks and speed up work flow. Among them Zephyr SmartAlign makes up for one of PageMakers more irritating shortcomings by letting you automatically align or distribute objects by edges or centers. Layout Grids makes the grid and guide situation more rational so it is easier to position your guides. You can save your setups and apply them to other pages and even to other files."

— Kathleen Tinkel, MacUser Magazine, Feb 1995

"SmartAlign, a feature popular in drawing programs and absent from PageMaker, takes the guesswork out of aligning and distributing elements of your layout."

— Jon Hersh, dbug Review, 2nd qtr, 1993

"Tired of reaching into menus and dialogs when you format your documents in Aldus Corps design and layout programs? Help is at hand in the form of two new $79.95 packages that add customizable floating palettes to Aldus PageMaker and FreeHand."

— News, MacWeek Magazine, 02.24.92

"Zephyr Specs is a super library in which you can store sets of mixed page elements of style for use later or elsewhere. Double clicking on any of the elements brings up the appropriate dialog box- for example, selecting a type item brings up the type specifications dialog box."

— Kathleen Tinkel, MacUser Magazine, Feb 1995

"Zephyr Palettes are cleverly conceived utilities that make Aldus PageMaker and Aldus FreeHand easier to use."

— Bill Justin, MacWorld Magazine, July 1992

"Zephyr extends PageMaker controls"

— Carolyn Said, MacWeek Magazine, 02.22.93

"New palettes can be created which let you create custom sets of fonts to be displayed in the font palette. This is ideal if you are working with large groups of fonts."

— Darryl Gordon, Software Reviews, San Diego Computer Journal, Sept 1992

"MasterPages provide the option of multiple master pages within a single document."

— Jon Hersh, dbug Review, 2nd qtr, 1993

"Zephyr CleanSweep is an Addition that automatically converts 4.0 publications. It searches your hard drive for 4.0 publications, and opens, converts, and saves them as PageMaker 5.0 publications."

— Q&A section, Aldus Magazine, Jan/Feb 1994

"I had a deadline. 3 weeks to update over 14,000 PageMaker pubs from 3.0 to 4.2. It could have been awful, CleanSweep saved me a lot of trouble."

— Dan Ahern, Customer, Glen Bard Graphics, Carol Stream, IL

It started as a game...

The game was called 'give me something to program'. My task was to come up with a problem in need of a solution, say how I'd like it solved, draw it up, and off he'd go to program. And then...I came up with something he deemed impossible, something that at the time most programs couldn't do, I wanted to be able to play with my fonts without having to go thru the menu all the time. It took awhile for him to figure out. Seeing it working on the screen it...looked like a product. We paused only briefly, soon grad school got put on hold while we became entrepeneurs running as fast as we could.

Two kids straight out of college, one computer, and $2000

From humble beginnings comes much good fun. Zephyr Design, as a business, started on one shared computer, a spare room, and $2000, which was all we had. Knowing this, it made sense to focus on extensions to other software to leverage our marketing dollars with their marketing efforts and to keep development cycles short. We had some real luck, smarts, and grit. Looking back, what we did was crazy. But then, some of the most worthwhile things one ever does in life could be deemed crazy at some point. Its a venture I'll always be proud of.

One product turned into many. Zephyr Flourished.

It was a great multi-year adventure, a healthy suite of 9 products, worldwide distribution, favorable reviews, various contracts of work for hire on top of that, it was two people coming up with ways to make people lives a little easier, it was fun, creative, challenging, and profitable. In the end, when interests between co-founders diverged I negotiated sale of the product line to Aldus and Adobe, who acquired Aldus in this timeline.

Bev's Influence

My influence on the business, goes from being a founder to shrink wrapping and shipping and much in between. In the area of software my areas of specialty were: market research, concept development, creative direction, prototype design specs, marketing, sales, contract negotiations [both local and international], some software testing, all graphic design [both for Zephyr Design and others] including software look/feel, packaging, manual layout, etc. In the area of marketing, advertising and graphic design: logos, ads, ID, feedback cards, focus groups, press kits and press tours.

Below is a list of our products and some more samples of work done. In lew of product descriptions, there is a series of quotes lifted from reviews and writeups in the press to the left. For further info please contact bev at bevdidit.

Product Line

PageMaker Additions
Zephyr Palettes
Zephyr DisBatch
Zephyr SmartAlign
Zephyr SuperSnap
Zephyr CleanSweep
Zephyr Grids
Zephyr MasterPages
Zephyr Essentials
Zephyr Specs

FreeHand Utility Software
Zephyr Palettes

Graphic Design / Marketing / PR / Ads:

Press Kits

Our press kits needed something. Press releases written, software shrink-wrapped, the grey Office Max folder holding it all was anonymous, boring, and doing the rest no justice. On a whim one evening shortly before leaving for the tour I carved out some block prints, printed them up, signed and dated them, and affixed them to the fronts. It looked more interesting, it had whimsy, I hoped it looked interesting enough to open up and look inside instead of getting lost on a desk of busy people. It worked, we got many reviews out of that visit. And then there was an unexpected added bonus, one of the editors liking the print had carefully removed it from the folder, framed it, and hung it in her office. On our next visit we had many more editors ready to happily sit thru whatever we might have to show them. That little added human touch helped us get better audiences then many slick major software companies.