Adobe Indesign 2020 -

For professionals still using InDesign CS6 or early CC versions, the 2020 release offered a compelling upgrade without forcing a steep learning curve. Today, many design studios continue using InDesign 2020 as their baseline version, skipping 2021 and 2022 until they need cloud-based features.

This was arguably the most practical "quality of life" feature introduced in 2020. Designers often work in vibrant color, but the final output—whether a newspaper, a laser printer, or a client’s monochrome PDF—might be in black and white.

InDesign is notorious for its plethora of panels—Paragraph, Character, Stroke, Links, Pages—it’s easy for the workspace to become cluttered. InDesign 2020 leaned heavily into context sensitivity by refining the .

A small but surprisingly popular addition was the built-in QR code generator. Previously, users needed external scripts or third-party tools. Now, from the Object menu, you could generate a fully customizable, vector-based QR code for URLs, plain text, emails, or SMS — directly on your layout. For event tickets, business cards, and packaging, this was an instant productivity boost.