The best of two disciplines

For a long time, automated PDF generation was a technical process riddled with design compromises. Systems were efficient but typographically unsatisfying. Or they were visually ambitious – and hard to automate.

speedata Publisher was created to eliminate this divide.

The idea was simple yet rigorous: Layout should not be retouched manually but computed by rules. Conditions, loops and data queries act directly in the layout – without sacrificing typographic quality.

The goal was an engine that masters both: deterministic processing of structured data and precise, print-ready typesetting.

Born from practice

Patrick Gundlach, computer scientist and typography enthusiast, started working on fully automated PDF generation early on. Project after project revealed the same tension: technical automation and design quality were treated as opposites.

speedata Publisher is the answer to that contradiction.

Instead of duplicating templates, layouts are described by rules. Instead of manual intervention, page flow is computed. Instead of “correcting” results, the logic is adapted.

The outcome: documents that are both reproducible and typographically precise.

Philosophy

speedata Publisher is neither design software nor a SaaS generator. It is a layout engine for production use.

Open source forms the foundation. Transparency and traceability are deliberate choices. For production operations, vendor binaries and support are available in the Pro package.

The orientation is long-term: stable output, predictable updates and layouts that keep working for years to come.