A quick tour of Adobe Indesign

Earlier this week I talked about Indesign and what it can do for you. Since it's quite a different product from usual publishing tools, mainly Word, and it's not as popular as Photoshop, the best way to introduce it is to give you a short tour of the software.

I've created a short video showing you in the inside of Indesign, you can find it at the bottom of this post. Below are the key elements I talk about in the video:

• Pages
  In Indesign, new pages are not created automatically when you type text. You have to first create the pages, then add some text placeholders on them.


• Layers
  If you're familiar with Photoshop, then you might already understand the concept of layers: Indesign allows you to create various layers to work with on which you can place objects. For example, you might have a layer for the background, a layer for the text you enter, and one for the images. Or you can have a layer for each language in your document.


• Place holders
  To add some text or an image in Indesign, you must first add a placeholder, i.e. a container (it can be rectangle, circular or in fact any shape is possible) in which your content will go. Maybe you could think of it as a corkboard on which you would pin little sheets of paper.


• Images links
  Once images are placed in your document (inside placeholders), they are not actually embedded in it, they are simply linked from their original location. Which means that your image library needs to be very well organized and not change later on, or that you will need to copy the image file and place it in the same folder as your Indesign document to make sure you don't misplace it.


• Drawings and effects While Indesign is often used for writing documents, it offers very good options for creating illustrations or adding some effects to images, text or shapes. So if you are preparing a technical Specs Sheet, you can actually draw some of the illustrations directly in Indesign.


• Masters
  In the same way that you can create a master in Powerpoint to control the background of your slides, you can use Masters to control your pages in Indesign. A master will help you control what the background will be like, but also what margins your page will have, where the text will go, how many columns you might have, etc..


• Precision
  Indesign is not the easiest tool to use, it is easy to spend a lot more time on it than on Word, but to me what makes it so special is the precision that it offers. You simply can't beat it. With Indesign you can control how your text flows from a place to another, how many columns there are, how many mms there are between each, how text would wrap around an image and much more.

So here is the video I promised, taken from a page of my free eBook:

[video type="youtube" clip_id="3cX9q9B4Hks"]

Question: Have you ever tried to use Indesign? If so, what did you think about it?

 

Why I love Indesign, and so should you

Adobe Indesign is a tool I learned to love but that not many people are familiar with. I've often defended it in favor of other word publishing software and since I've been asked a few times why I like it or what it can do, I thought I'd write a couple of articles about Indesign, to give you a little introduction and see if you want to try it for yourself.

First, what is Indesign? Indesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite package, it comes along with Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. I explained the difference between the three tools in a previous post, but to summarize, Photoshop is to manipulate photos (although you can do much much more), illustrator is to create illustrations, and Indesign is to create documents.

Using slideshare for your presentations

If you're proud of the presentation you've just delivered and want to show it to a large audience, then you can try using Slideshare to share your slides on the internet. Slideshare is a cloud service where you can upload your presentations and share them easily.

Of course if your presentation was a financial report prepared for your CFO, you'd better keep it private on your C: drive, but if you're willing to go public, read on.

Here is an example of application. This week I'm talking about presentations on this blog and I just finalized my presentation on "3 simple steps to improve your presentations" (include link). I obviously want to share it with you, so slideshare immediately comes to mind. I could host the file on my server and give you a link to download it, but who would really want to download yet another large file and wait for the download before they can see it? Slideshare offers a much better alternative.

Why share your slides on Slideshare?

1. You can reach anyone
Slideshare is open to anyone, no need to login or be a premium member to view presentations. When uploading slides, you can choose to make them private for a small group, or public for the whole web to see.

2.Presentations are embedded on your site
All the presentations you upload on Slideshare remain on their server, but you don't need to necessarily view them on the Slideshare website. You can embed a slide viewer with reading controls (next, previous, full screen, etc) on your own website for your readers to view your presentation without ever leaving your site. Exactly like you can do with a Youtube video.

3. No need to download anything
As mentioned earlier, readers don't need to download a presentation file to view it, it is displayed directly on the screen, in the player. This might seem a small detail but it means one less step for your reader to take before viewing your presentation, which can make all the difference on the web, where people have a very short attention span.

4.You get more traffic
People browse or search for presentations on Slideshare, so you will find more viewers for your presentation if you put it on Slideshare than if you simply host it on your website and only share it there. These viewers might then come to your website if they liked what they read (as long as you didn't forget to include a link to your site), so the instant benefit of using Slideshare is finding new readers for your website. Additionally all these links from Slideshare to your website create some good SEO magic and will improve your ranking in search engines, bringing you even more readers.

So here is my presentation, displayed directly in my blog for you to view without going anywhere else.


Question: Do you use slideshare? What do you like about it?

3 simple tips to instantly improve your presentations

When I arrived at my new job last year, one of the responsibilities I was given was to help people build better presentations. To be honest at first I didn't feel like I was the right person for this. Who was I to tell senior staff that their slides needed a makeover? But when looking at why passed in my hands, it was not that hard to quickly improve the presentations, at least from a design perspective.

That's what I want to share with you, three simple steps you can take to instantly improve your presentations:

1. Choose a color scheme
Your background is green because it's your corporate color. You write in black, have orange titles, and highlight important text in red. That seems practical, but I bet the result will be simply…ugly.
A simple way to make a presentation slide look well put together is to select just two or three colors, ideally colors that go well together, and stick with them on all the slides. It's not something complicated, yet not many people apply this principle of choosing a color palette.

Why you should build a good picture library

An indispensable tool for any marketer is a good picture library, full of high quality images and well organized. Having images at hand when creating any communication material will be of great help. I'd like to discuss why I think pictures are so important, give you a few ideas of where you can source them.

Why you should value pictures

• Pictures improve your visibility online:

For a start, having pictures in your blog properly tagged with a relevant file name and description will improve your SEO ranking. But most importantly, images are visual and help people scan through content quickly. A direct result is that using images will get your content found more easily on Social Media sites, since most people will look at your picture over someone's text.

• A picture is worth a 1'000 words

We've all heard this old saying, and whether you use a picture online or inside a brochure, it remains valid that a picture can help illustrate a point much more quickly than a text. Think of technical illustrations, but also anything that has to do about design or even emotions.

• Pictures will make you look professional

If chosen carefully and used properly, pictures will enhance any type of material you produce and make it more sophisticated. I would stress the importance of using good quality photos or drawings though, and not jumping to a clipart or poorly taken photo.

• Pictures can be used and reused

A good collection of images is a great thing to have in your tool box. You will be able to reuse your pictures online, in your print material or at trade shows. Using your pictures across a variety of medias is a good thing to reinforce your branding - assuming you chose them well and they represent your business.

What you can use pictures for?

There is no limitation really, but just to give you an idea of the importance of building a picture library for your business, here are some examples of application:

• Websites, blogs


• Social media sites


• Presentations


• Print: brochures, posters, annual reports, technical specs sheets


• Trade show booths


• Office decoration

Where to find good pictures

As stated earlier I think it's really important that you choose your pictures carefully, keeping in mind the use you intend to make of them. Also, when I speak of pictures, it includes photos (products, places, people, etc) and illustrations (paintings, drawings, technical illustrations, etc). Without going too much into the details, here is a quick list of where you can find pictures:

• Finding photos
  
  
  
  • Pay a professional and take your own
  
  
  • Purchase stock photos on sites like Istockphoto
  
  
  • Source Creative Commons photos from the web
  
  
  • Use your own photos
  
  
  
  

• Finding illustrations
  
  
  
  • Hire an illustrator
  
  
  • Purchase stock illustrations
  
  
  
  

When writing this post I realize how much I like talking about images, and how much there is to say about it, so I will definitely come back more in details on the subject.

Photo: photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Question: Have you built your own library? What's in it?