![]() Next time you are creating a catalog, analyze the layout of your document and where you are going to place each piece of information. It allows me to outsource some tasks to my client.I use it every time I create a catalog because: With data merge you can instantly layout hundreds of pages that have a “repetitive layout” – like business cards, certificates or even catalogs – starting from a spreadsheet and a template. Data mergeĭata merge is an amazing timesaver, and it is one of those features that many InDesign users don’t know about. If you have to work with a Word file, you might want to check out our tutorial on how to import a Word file to InDesign. This procedure can save you loads of time and almost completely automate the process of importing your text. Find the step-by-step tutorial in this post about master pages in InDesign. Next, you can import the text in InDesign. To do so, you need to set up your master pages, create a text-frame in each page of the master, thread the text, and activate the “Primary Text Frame” function. This task is something that InDesign can do itself – with just a few clicks you can import the text and let InDesign automatically create the pages and the threaded text-frames. If you’ve done it before, you know how much time it takes to create all the pages and the text flow correctly in the document. Your job is then to import this text into your document and give it the right style. Most of the time, especially with books or user manuals, the text comes from a pre-formatted document either as a Word file or an RTF file. ![]() Paragraph Styles really make a huge difference here, but there are other features that can help you, whether you are working on a book, a user manual, a catalog, or you are typing directly in InDesign. Next step after creating a solid base for your project is to import the content into your document quickly. Starting your projects from a template has a clear time benefit, but it’s also great when you are working in a team because it ensures that everybody starts the project from the same place, and a consistent structure among all the files produced by the team allows each participant to work on the document more efficiently.Ĭlearly, you don't need to work only on your documents, but you can also download an InDesign template (in the link you'll find the best I found online) and start working from there. ![]() You can download it from this post where I also explained how my InDesign paragraph styles are structured. So I created a Style Sheet that I could use as a starting point for any of my projects. The little things that were always changing were the Font Families used for the titles and the body (and of course some smallest things like spaces before paragraphs and so on). That was a complete waste of time because I was literally always creating the same identical structure. Despite having a regular format, it generally took me from 3 to 4 hours to structure my styles on an average project. Over the years, I came up with a very practical way of structuring my styles, and I noticed I kept repeating the same structure over and over in all my documents. But styles are very important for keeping your layout consistent, applying changes effectively, or using features like Table of Contents or Hyperlinks. Why is that?Ĭreating all the styles in a document might be a huge effort and sometimes it might look like it makes little sense. If you haven’t mastered them already, you should learn them ASAP (check out our tutorial on InDesign Paragraph Styles).Īlthough paragraph styles are very practical, help you with creating a better layout and save lots of time, many InDesign users don’t use them – even when they know them and they understand the advantages. Integrating this feature can improve your productivity tremendously and reduce the time you spend on laying out your documents. Paragraph Styles are the single most useful feature in InDesign. Using Aristotle’s words, if you do something well at the beginning, you are halfway to a successful end. Download the free ebook Well begun is half done
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