Focal Image Ltd was set up in the UK by Dr Kaveh Bazargan in 1988. A physicist by training, his intense interest in the emerging area of desktop publishing led him to start a service company for publishers, with the aim of delivering cutting edge technology to academic publishers. 25 years later, the company has expanded internationally, and remains at the forefront of technology.

Focal Image has always had a reputation for breaking barriers in technology. We were one of the first users of Adobe Illustrator. In 1989, we created the line art for a book published by Blackwell Science. To our knowledge this was the first book published in the UK with computer generated illustrations. Focal Image pioneered the practice of scanning figures at high resolution and at print quality, directly from the desktop. This allowed full camera ready copy to be delivered to publishers.

In 1999 Kaveh came up with the revolutionary new idea of using “structured” TeX for delivering composition work to STM publishers. The system has stood the test of time to this day, and allows the efficient delivery of the most complex XML content.