Indesign’s Las Vegas Return: CES 2023

January 31, 2023 | Blog
Indesign, LLC will be celebrating its 26th anniversary in February. And for nearly all of those 26 years, we have attended the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I say “nearly” only because the pandemic ruined that, too, as we didn’t attend in 2021 or 2022. But things are feeling more and more back to normal, as Indesign and thousands of other companies returned to CES in 2023, which clocked in a respectable 115,000 attendees (compared to last year’s measly 45,000). This year’s show was especially awesome for myself and, electrical engineer, Matt Streicher, as it was our first-ever trip to the iconic event. Contrast that with the roughly 30 years of CES attendance by our fearless leader Ron Kern, and you can imagine how often he felt like a tour guide. Face-to-Face Connections Our Indesign trio enjoyed a productive and impactful few days. Though we regularly interact with clients and partners virtually, nothing beats face-to-face conversations. We met with many of our wonderful semiconductor and manufacturing partners to discuss the latest trends and technologies. We explored the vast show floors filled with gadgets, gizmos, and immersive exhibits (like LG’s phenomenal display in the video below). And most importantly, we spent time connecting with clients, often over a meal in one of the many fantastic restaurants that Vegas offers. Your browser does not support the video tag. Outside the Comfort Zone CES 2023 even offered us engineers an opportunity to explore outside of our comfort zones. If you asked us on a normal day, “Where’s a place you’re unlikely to ever be spotted?”, a perfectly valid answer would be, “In a nightclub.” But when we received an invitation to a party at the OMNIA Nightclub in Caesars Palace from our friends at the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), we figured that might just be the kind of nightclub party that we’d fit in at. So we went, we didn’t dance, and we had a blast. We even found some Nordic friends there (the semiconductor kind; not the kind from Norway). Though it’s a year away, we’re already looking forward to CES 2024. We hope to see you there! About Indesign Indesign, LLC is a multi-discipline engineering design firm that provides full turnkey electronic product development to allow clients to get their new product ideas into the market quickly. We offer complete product development capabilities, starting with a product concept and finishing with a ready-to-manufacture design. To learn more about us and our services, contact us at (317) 377-5450 today!
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Thanksgiving and Community

November 22, 2022 | Blog
One of the lesser-known facts about Indesign, LLC is that within our team, we have many wonderful cooks. They won’t ever say so, but when given the mission to team up and create the year’s best lunch for Thanksgiving, our employees understand the mission and have never missed the target. It seems the Indesign drive for excellence spans beyond the borders of engineering. (more…)
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Starting with the End in Mind: The Importance of Requirements

April 5, 2022 | Blog
Some people say, “Enjoy the ride; it’s not just about getting to the destination,” or something like that. For some things in life that’s true, and good advice. It’s also true, to a degree, for product development. We enjoy the process of building new systems. Helping our clients solve their problems is what we do, and we have fun doing it. But product development usually has strict expectations for budget and schedule. This isn’t a casual joyride. A product development is a purposeful endeavor, and in some cases we are setting out to do something which has never been done before. (more…)
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What’s in a Name? 25 Years of “Indesign”

February 28, 2022 | Blog
A little over 25 years ago, teams of people were planning to launch a new company. The code name for the new company was Phoenix as the teams were working for the consumer products division of AT&T Bell Labs/Lucent and those jobs were set to move from Indianapolis to New Jersey. Employment changes were required by all. A small group of people decided to stay in Indy and form an engineering design services company. Drafts of business plans had been written, and plans were being made for staffing, facilities, IT, and finance. Now it was time to come up with a “real” name for this enterprise. A name that could be put on the self-printed business cards and brochures. As with all activities for this fledgling company, then and now, we were all asked to be creative and submit ideas for the name of the new company. How We Started I remember thinking about possible company names on my drive home that day. Within the Bell Labs community, we were referred to as the Indianapolis Laboratories or “Indy Labs”. I was thinking of possible company names that would incorporate that part of our shared past. I really liked “INgineering”, but it looked funny, and I didn’t think the engineering team would allow it. I sat at my Mac and started typing in different variations and finally hit on “IND”, the airport abbreviation for Indianapolis, and “Design”. Removing a duplicate D left INDesign. That seemed to work! I then went through all the fonts I had installed on my trusty Mac on this new combo word. I really liked the look of INDesign in a handwriting font I had recently downloaded. To me, in that font, the logo looked like something new, something just created and exciting. The logo had to be red for the same reason that Ferraris and roses are red. Red means passion and energy, and there sure was a lot of that with this group! The next evening, team members submitted their ideas for names and logos, and there were many good ones. A series of votes were taken, with INDesign emerging as the selection. The tag line “Innovative Design of Products and Systems” was added to the logo. It was a thrill to see the logo on our first building on Caito Drive and on our first website. Where We Are Now A few years after our start, a “real” professional logo was created. The spelling was changed to Indesign with the “In” remaining red, and the silly “new company” handwriting font was replaced with one better representing an established company. “Innovative Design” was replaced with “Engineering Excellence” and our logo has stayed that way ever since. Obviously, the company would have been successful no matter what name was chosen. Shakespeare addressed that point a couple of centuries ago. Now 25 years later, Indesign has clients all over the world, and the staff has more than doubled in size. Indesign is a brand that represents the integrity and efforts of all the people that have worked here, and I’m very proud to be one of them. Contact Us With over 25 years of experience, Indesign, LLC, has developed a proven product development process for a variety of markets, beginning with product concept development and ending with design for manufacturing. If you are interested in learning more about our engineering and design services, contact us today at (317) 377-5450!
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Indesign, LLC Gives Back to the Community Through Meals on Wheels

November 23, 2021 | Blog
The team at Indesign, LLC has a long history of community involvement and is proud to continue serving our community. Meals on Wheels is a wonderful organization that we are privileged to work with. Through Meals on Wheels, the Indesign team volunteers to deliver meals to home bound citizens and seniors in our local community. Meals on Wheels is the only provider of medically-tailored meals to Central Indiana’s home bound citizens. (more…)
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Engineering a Halloween Costume

October 28, 2021 | Blog
Every year, Indesign, LLC has a fall festival. Traditionally, we have a company Halloween costume contest, office decoration contest, pumpkin carving contest, and trick-or-treating in the office for all family and friends. It is a lot of fun! One of my favorite parts is the giant black cat straddling the office wall. Sorry for the blower fan that ends up on your desk, Sydney. My son has always dressed up as a robot for Halloween (maybe he’ll grow up to be a nerd like me). My wife is a very creative person and makes costumes by hand with the kids, and one year I decided to help in the best way I knew how. I dusted off my old Arduino from back in the day when I wrote firmware for fun instead of for a living. I proudly used this same Arduino to demo one of my personal projects when I interviewed for a job. In this case, for Halloween, I programmed it to display a little Halloween greeting on an LCD. I also wired up some seven-segment LEDs to create a flashing message. Powered by a USB battery pack, it turned out pretty well, and he loved it! Don’t let the serious look on his face fool you. Trust me… he loved it. We made our rounds through the office, collecting way more candy than a responsible parent would allow. There are probably a hundred photos from the fall festival. Everyone always has a blast, and it’s fun to browse through photos of everyone that came and see all the kids’ costumes. After the fall festival at Indesign, we walked around the neighborhood. This is a great memory for me and my family and for the folks at Indesign. Mixing technology with Halloween is only natural for an embedded software engineer, and it made for an extra fun costume and hopefully an enjoyable blog. I’m thankful that I enjoy my job and that I was able to enhance the holiday for my son using the skills I use every day at Indesign. I hope it showed him and the other kids that engineering is fun and creative! Contact Us At Indesign, LLC, our team has the expertise, experience, and passion for engineering and design services. We have helped a variety of markets design and develop embedded electronic products for over 20 years. Our product development process ensures that we deliver high-quality projects on schedule and on budget. If you are interested in learning more about our engineering & design services, contact us today at (317) 377-5450!
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Successful Product Development During the Global Chip Shortage

July 23, 2021 | Blog
Almost everyone has heard about the parts shortage that is currently affecting the global supply chain for semiconductors. In the past, news of a microchip shortage wouldn’t make much of a splash on national news, but the current situation is unprecedented. The lead time on some parts is more than a year (and even longer in some cases). Distributors and contract manufacturers are scrambling to get customers the parts that they need, but sometimes they simply are not available and an alternative solution is the only path forward. At Indesign, LLC, we’ve adapted quickly to ensure that our clients’ product designs can move to full production despite the parts shortage. (more…)
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The Benefits of Electron to Indesign, LLC

May 26, 2021 | Blog
Although every client is unique at Indesign, LLC, a lot of our processes carry over from project to project. As a company of engineers, whenever we find ourselves doing the same thing more than once, we’re primed to search for how we can improve or automate that task. While, of course, the technical underpinnings for automation have existed nearly as long as computers themselves, we are always looking for ways and processes to do things better. This is where the Electron framework comes in. (more…)
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GPS 3.0 Is Here!

December 31, 2020 | Blog
Okay, so GPS 3.0 isn’t technically a real thing, but a new third generation of GPS (or more globally GNSS) really is on the horizon and it will bring with it unprecedented accuracy for a whole host of locations and position-based applications. (more…)
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Live Virtual Tours at Indesign

November 30, 2020 | Blog
Indesign, like many other companies, has had to adapt in several ways during the coronavirus pandemic. We love having visitors at Indesign, but are currently unable to host guests. We knew early on at the start of the pandemic that it would be important to find a way to host virtually and continue giving tours of our building. We explored some options where tour-takers could click through high-resolution 3D pictures, but this option lacked interaction with Indesigners, which is our favorite part of tours. So we did what engineers do and got creative! (more…)
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