CreativePro Week 2020  In early February, I booked my airfare from Chicago to Austin TX (with a stop the night before to visit my brothers in Dallas). As a speaker, I had received my InDesign Conference session topics – Create Engaging Interactive Documents in InDesign and Styles, Next Level Tips. I was working on ideas and examples that I wanted to present for my sessions. I was getting excited to see my fellow speakers, the many people who run CPW and most of all – the attendees. I truly enjoy connecting with everyone, learning about their lives, both home and at work, hearing about the ..read more

InDesign is such a versatile program. It can not only help you format the inside of your novel, but you can create the entire wrap around cover, the front, spine AND back cover. The great part about this method is that the spine is flexible, so if your content is updated, and the page count changes, you can simply change the spine, align it up again, and export. You don’t need any higher math to complete the new size. Take a look at this video on how to set up a Book Cover with an adjustable spine in InDesign ..read more

Learning InDesign can be daunting. The overwhelming number of buttons, settings and panels can be downright frightening. In this post, I’m going to outline ways to set up InDesign so that it’s efficient and you don’t have to hunt to find frequently used panels or change settings every time you begin to work.  First, let’s talk about what you see when you first launch InDesign.  Modify and Save your InDesign Workspace If you’re using InDesign 2020, and launch it after a fresh install, you may see that there is no Control Panel at the top ..read more

The post What is the difference between InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop? appeared first on Graphic Design | Adobe Certified Trainer | Laurie Ruhlin ..read more

You’ve created a document in InDesign. It’s time to export. There are so many choices out there. PDF for print and interactive. Publish Online, ePub, both Fixed Layout as well as Reflowable. Then there are all the third party enterprise plug-ins. My favorite way to export from InDesign is to use in5 by Ajar Productions. ajarpro.com. This document was created in InDesign, exported using in5 and inserted into a WordPress Blog using a free Word Press plug-in from Ajar Productions. All the buttons, animations and interactivity was created in InDesign, but the export to allow all of those features ..read more

There are two delete keys. One deletes to the left and one to the right. If you think of the vertical open area on the keyboard as a cursor, you’ll always remember which way it goes. So now you don’t have to use your arrow keys to move to the end of a word to delete.  The post Delete to the Right. Delete to the Left. appeared first on Graphic Design | Adobe Certified Trainer | Laurie Ruhlin ..read more

I remember my first job out of college. I was a designer (desktop publisher) at a local printer, using QuarkXPress – probably 3.0 or 3.3. I was making a brochure, and my text kept disappearing after I hit Enter. I was getting frustrated and kept closing my document without saving to start over. I finally realized I was hitting the “Wrong” Enter key.  The keys are not the same.The Enter (win) or Return (mac) key located next to the quote key and above the shift key, moves your cursor to the next line, and also makes a hard paragraph return ..read more

If you’ve ever been in one of my classes, you may remember that “the phrase that pays” is SELECT to AFFECT. This means simply that if you want to bold a word, you must first SELECT that word. Then you can bold it.  If you want to fill a square with red, you can’t just look at the square on your screen and think that InDesign will know exactly which square on your page you are thinking about filling with red…you’ve got to get your selection tool and CLICK on that square. Then fill with red. In that order. I see so many problems when peo ..read more