indesign

Easy Template Design

behind the scenes

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.

template terms find replace, find/change indesign template easy for client to edit and change or alter based on input locked layers locking indesign cc

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.

lockedLayers

Spread number reminders

Help

I am working on a project at the moment where there are a few spreads with names and then a bunch that are referred to by numbers. None of these actually co-relate to the printed page. This means I can’t just scroll to spread 5 when my client is referring to spread 5. To remind myself about which spread is being referred to I have simply placed a “note to self” box in the margin with the spread number. Simple and easy.

indesign trick tip help expert note message to self spreads

Efficient multi-tasking

Real life

This year I am again doing the Popsugar reading challenge. For efficient and effective multi-tasking purposes I have opted to make the “a book that’s more than 600 pages” challenge double up as something useful work my career by reading the InDesign CC Help book. There are so many cool new features since I started learning InDesign CS2 and I must admit, I haven’t kept up to date as best as I should.

two birds, one stone, using a reading challenge to read the help book for the software I use most often. adobe indesign cc, popsugar reading challenge, multi-tasking