Advanced InDesign: Productivity Techniques

Course details

Do you consider yourself a seasoned Adobe InDesign user, but sometimes feel that you’re stuck in your InDesign work habits or wasting precious time completing everyday tasks that you suspect could be handled faster or easier? Join Bart Van de Wiele in this course, where he shows you how to tackle common design problems using advanced InDesign functionality. Bart draws from real-life situations that he’s encountered as a professional print designer to show you how you can do more with InDesign. He details scenarios for the automation of common projects like catalogs, business cards, and brochures using style automation, shortcuts, and regular expressions. Bart also covers common sources of frustration like combining images and tables, creating multiple sizes of an ad, and sorting lists alphabetically.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Welcome to this course
02 - Course prerequisites
03 - Understanding the challenges

1. Building Better Long Documents

04 - Long documents
05 - Creating running headers
06 - Adding a last page number
07 - Adding page color labels
08 - Challenge - Create your own running header
09 - Solution - Create your own running header

2. Preflighting Your Document

10 - Preflighting documents
11 - Knowing what to look for
12 - Building a preflight profile
13 - Fixing errors
14 - Exchanging profiles
15 - Challenge - Creating a custom preflight profile
16 - Solution - Creating a custom preflight profile

3. Laying Out an Interview

17 - Laying out interviews
18 - Building styles for the speakers
19 - Changing the prefix
20 - Challenge - Changing the interviewee
21 - Solution - Changing the interviewee

4. Merging Data and Layout

22 - Merging data
23 - Preparing the data in Excel
24 - Placing placeholders
25 - Merging the document as a single-record layout
26 - Merging a multi-record layout
27 - Challenge - Creating personalized mailing
28 - Solution - Creating personalized mailing

5. Creating Mixed Ink Swatches

29 - Mixed ink swatches
30 - Creating a mix ink swatch
31 - Creating a mix ink group
32 - Challenge - Mixing your own colors
33 - Solution - Mixing your own colors

6. Linking Images to Text

34 - Linking images to text
35 - What is an anchored object
36 - Using image frames as anchored objects
37 - Setting options
38 - Duplicating the frames across your document
39 - Challenge - Adding anchored objects on your own
40 - Solution - Adding anchored objects on your own

7. Content-Aware Text Formatting

41 - Content-aware formatting
42 - Preparing character styles
43 - Using GREP to highlight negative numbers
44 - Using GREP to highlight a specific range of numbers
45 - Challenge - Adding your own content-aware expression
46 - Solution - Adding your own content-aware expression

8. How to Link Text to the Same Source

47 - Linking text to same source
48 - Placing and linking text
49 - Updating text
50 - Preserving overrides
51 - Challenge - Defining your own text variables
52 - Solution - Defining your own text variables

9. Creating Cool Knock-Out Effects

53 - Knock-out effects
54 - Creating knock-out groups with shapes
55 - Creating knock-out groups with placed artwork
56 - Challenge - Try and recreate artwork
57 - Solution - Try and recreate artwork

10. Creating a Duotone Postcard

58 - Duotone postcards
59 - Creating a monotone postcard
60 - Creating a duotone postcard
61 - Challenge - Recreate a duotone postcard
62 - Solution - Recreate a duotone postcard

11. How to Combine Images with Tables

63 - Combining images with tables
64 - Converting to graphic cells
65 - Setting padding and scaling
66 - Challenge - Placing your own images in a table
67 - Solution - Placing your own images in a table

12. Creating Multi-Sized Ads

68 - Multi-sized ads
69 - Duplicating and scaling ads
70 - Updating content across all versions
71 - Challenge - Create additional sizes
72 - Solution - Create additional sizes

13. How to Alphabetically Sort Lists

73 - Sorting lists
74 - Sorting the text alphabetically
75 - Challenge - Sort an alphabetical list in a table
76 - Solution - Sort an alphabetical list in a table

Conclusion

77 - Goodbye