While making an InDesign template for a client. I thought of how daunting InDesign can be with all its options and tools. Knowing my client would like the easiest template possible I did certain things to simplify the template. The biggest consideration was to lock anything that the client will not be editing. I set up the InDesign package with multiple cover images so updating the link changed the cover image. Super easy.

The template has the date and company name getting changed in several places each so I have set up find and change terms (find <company> and <date>). This makes it very easy to change all instances. The textboxes which contain these two terms were also made flexibly so if there was to be a long company name, the textbox would adjust.

Another item which needs editing by the client is a radial graph. Everything that is not being edited is on a locked layer. This takes out most of the complexity here and creates a less daunting editing task.