INTRODUCTION TO INDESIGN &
RAPID DEVELOPMENT
John Allan / Keith Hackett

OVERVIEW
•Our team
•InDesign considerations
•InDesign & Rapid Development features
•What we have learned / Rapid Dev

OUR TEAM
New team
New project
Low experience baseline

INDESIGN
Adobe Creative Cloud suite
Creates:
Brochures
Books
Magazines
Posters
Electronic versions of all

INDESIGN – CREATIVE CLOUD ADVANTAGES
Bridge – File Sharing
Illustrator – vector drawings
Photoshop – image optimization/creation
Acrobat DC – publishing

INDESIGN – WHY?
Layout instructor guides/ student workbooks
Consistency (master pages)
Recyclability
Small file size
Graphic heavy Word docs too large
Publish online

INDESIGN

INDESIGN –OUR PROJECT

INDESIGN – OUR PROJECT
100+ instructor guides
100+ student workbooks
LMS hosted Learning objects

RAPID DESIGN/DEVELOPMENT
Collaboration
Communication
Coordination

INDESIGN & RAPID DEVELOPMENT FEATURES

RAPID DESIGN/DEVELOPMENT
•Templates
•CC Libraries
•Master Pages
• Footers/ headers/ alignment
•Swatches

TEMPLATES

CC LIBRARIES

MASTER PAGES

ALIGNMENT
OF
ELEMENTS

SWATCHES

PARAGRAPH STYLES

CHARACTER STYLES

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED / RAPID DEV
What we knew but learned the hard way

RAPID DEVELOPMENT
“Signed off” documents before development

TEMPLATE – COMMON PAGES AND ELEMENTS
Pagination
Footers/headers
Front page / back page
Table of contents
Glossary
Organizers
Icons
Tables

IMAGES
Sourcing
Creating (drawing, photography)
Stock (Shutterstock)
Vectors vs photographs
Who provides what?

MEDIA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
Common storage server/ resource*
Folder structure*
File naming*
Tagging*
*all must be aware and trained

SME ACCESS
Regular access to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Informal
Formal

QR CODES
QR codes link to external
resources
Saves including unnecessary
details in documents

INCOPY
Integrates with Adobe InDesign
Allows non-developers to:
Review text
Edit text
Edit media

BATCH PROCESSING
Photoshop “Batch processing” of images
(using custom Actions)

TEAM
COACHING

TEAM COACHING
•Improve communication
•Improve Soft skills
•Focus on goals
•Individualized assistance with teamwork

KEEP EVERYONE IN THE LOOP
•Updates
•Meetings
•Email policy

QUESTIONS & THANK YOU