Bernskiold Media

Five Practical InDesign Tips

In the early parts of last week, I had a rush job to design and get printed approx. 600 copies of a program for a performance—a Revue. For any print project like this, InDesign is my choice and every time I open up the application to do anything with multiple pages (this was 20 pages long), I am happy to have a few features in InDesign.

I wanted to share with you, five very practical tips in InDesign that does help when doing a project.

1. Use Paragraph Styles!

I wouldn’t dream of doing a project that isn’t just a simple flyer without paragraph styles. These give you the ability to set up a style (like CSS if you are a web guy like me) that can be applied to any number of paragraphs. This style can contain the font size, font family, color and everything about the display. The beauty is that you can go back and change this at any time, should you want, and all paragraphs with the style will update with it.

2. Place Files and Manage the Links

This may be an absolute no-brainer to you, but if it isn’t, beware! Make sure to always save images and resources you use in your InDesign document in a separate folder on your hard drive (preferable in connection with the InDesign document). From here, you can place your files into InDesign which will create a link to the file. If you modify the file, it will be updated to reflect that within InDesign too.

Do not forget to write your text in another app as well. If you have your InDesign file go corrupt or get deleted, or if you need to extract the text to something else, you will not have to rely on InDesign for this but you will have your other text document.

3. Don’t forget the layers!

Most features in the Creative Suite is there because they are useful (with some notable exceptions). In InDesign, the layers feature is none of these exceptions. Use them to your advantage and don’t forget about them. I usually have my layers set up for images and text to go on separate ones, so I can easily preview one or the other (or turn off one or the other). At the same time, I keep some structural elements on their own layers (header, footer, backgrounds) that usually are positioned on the same level to the images and text.

4. Know the limitations

If you have got the Creative Suite, know the limitations of the individual apps. You don’t have to recreate a structural element in InDesign that is easier off creating inside of Photoshop or Illustrator. In fact, you can benefit from doing it there (especially if it is very graphical) and then placing it and linking it to the InDesign file.

5. Always Preflight

Before a document goes out to print, use the built-in preflighting tools to make sure the document is not missing some links or fonts that don’t exist. This is most crucial, especially if it has been some time since the creation of the document.  Preflighting will catch most nasty errors with your file and gives you a chance to fix them before it is too late!