8 Reasons You Should Switch to InDesign for Your Publishing Needs
Every digital designer will tell you Adobe software products are better than others. But why? Why not choose another program with similar capabilities? What are the benefits of Adobe InDesign for page layout versus other competitors, such as to Microsoft Publisher? Here are 8 compelling reasons to choose Indesign for your next project:
1. Adobe InDesign offers the best output project features.
The features that InDesign CC offers to see a design layout from start to finish are incredibly robust. Considering its output for any given project, Multiple Platforms Usage allows you to design a document with horizontal and vertical variants in layout by using the Layout> Alternate Layout tool or the Pages panel menu. Liquid Layouts also allow designers to layout content for different page sizes and device platforms.
2. Adobe InDesign produces greater quality content for print and digital.
Any designer will tell you the quality of content is phenomenal in InDesign. When it comes to fine-tuning your file’s text and graphics, the softwares editing capabilities are as low as a .001 degree precision. Not to mention the user control offered within any page and the manipulation of its typography, colors and styling.
3.Adobe InDesign makes collaboration and sharing assets with your team easy.
CC libraries, saved on the Cloud, makes it easy for your teammates to create and share photos, color schemes, icons, logos, type styles and more! Any team member with Adobe CC can open and edit files (with your permission of course). This is a huge time-saver and will increase your productivity.
4. Adobe InDesign saves you time.
Here’s just a couple features in InDesign that will speed up your workflow so you can deliver quicker.
Layers —Allowing you to organize your project by element will keep everything organized in your doc and allow you to quickly switch to the piece you are working with.
Pages/Master Pages —Allows you to create and save a page style to reference later and reuse again.
Style Groups — Use styles again too by making use of paragraph, character, object and text style groups to save and reuse throughout your document.
5. Adobe InDesign comes with full support.
As an Adobe Member, the support available to you is extensive. You may feel
The Support Community also is an online forum where you can ask questions, find your answers, learn from experts and share your knowledge.
6. Other Adobe software can be used in conjunction with InDesign.
Adobe InDesign shares a direct integration with other Adobe programs, like Adobe Bridge (creative asset manager), Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. If you are searching, creating and editing images, they are linked within Indesign and you can quickly toggle back and forth between the programs while working. Another bonus is the built-in connection to Typekit, Adobe’s full free font library. Easily manipulate text using the font export formatting option.
7. You join the Adobe Community.
Adobe really is a family. Once you become an Adobe member you can try any other CC programs on a trial basis. This allows you to explore other top Adobe products, including Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Premiere Pro. You also can get access to their stock photo site, Adobe Stock, or Spark Post, which gives you unlimited social and branding templates. Adobe Help supplies you with tutorials and templates for all of its software.
8. Adobe InDesign is the industry standard choice and trusted by professionals.
Learn and use the #1 software by the world’s leading design company. Visual Persuasion offers expert instruction from industry professionals who live and breathe Adobe software. We offer a wide array of classes including Adobe’s most popular applications, one of which is InDesign CC.
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Adobe InDesign vs. Illustrator: Which One Should You Use?
Adobe InDesign and Illustrator are both popular choices with visual artists. But which is better?
There are many tools from Adobe that help graphic designers and production artists to create appealing content. However, not all of them are the same, and in most cases, each design tool accomplishes different tasks. Therefore, to produce high-quality content cost-effectively, you need to know the core differences between these graphic designing tools.
Keep reading to discover the differences between InDesign and Illustrator.
What Is Adobe InDesign?
InDesign is a professional tool that helps you create high-quality page and layout designs for digital or print media. It also gives you access to Adobe Stock for typefaces from world-leading foundries and all kinds of images.
Adobe InDesign also makes your content management tasks easier with Adobe Experience Manager. Therefore, the tool offers you everything you need to produce and publish a wide range of print or digital media like books, eBooks, digital magazines, and product brochures.
What Is Adobe Illustrator?
Designers who create designs for mobile, interactive video, print, and web consider Adobe Illustrator a gold standard for the industry. It’s essentially a vector graphics drawing and editing software of the Adobe Creative Suite. With your creativity, you can make high-quality illustrations of real-life events so that you can get rid of using stock images on your web pages or mobile apps.
Illustrator is quickly becoming more popular among content creators and freelance designers who want to take care of their own design work. Thanks to its numerous drawing functions, you can create a variety of artworks for digital or print media projects.
InDesign comes with multiple features, such as an elaborate toolbox. Some of the tools of this app allow you to select, edit, and create page components. Another set of tools let you select type, lines, shapes, and gradients.
The Adobe Capture extension feature of InDesign empowers you to extract design elements like color palettes, shapes, and typefaces from an inspiring image. You can use these extracted resources to create authentic content using your own imagination.
Related: How to Choose a Color Scheme for Your App: Things to Consider
Other than design features, this tool also comes with robust page layout editing and printing options.
On the other hand, Illustrator offers more drawing features than InDesign. Tools like Selection, Pen, Curvature, and Layer let you create unique designs quickly with drag-and-drop editing. The Recolor Artwork solution is an AI-based color tool that quickly swaps design colors without manual editing.
Automations and Integrations
You can easily integrate InDesign with other third-party apps to export and import content or layouts. For example, Brightspot and InDesign integration facilitates effortless digital-to-print workflow for newspapers, magazines, and books. InDesign can also integrate with third-party content management systems like Canto DAM.
Similar to InDesign, Illustrator can also connect with third-party apps like content management systems with limited options. However, it has robust integration with other Adobe Creative Suite tools like Photoshop and Adobe PDF.
Illustrator supports various file formats so that you can reuse designs and artworks from other tools. The tool can import Photoshop artwork, Adobe PDF, AutoCAD, EPS, and DCS files effortlessly.
For design workflow automation in Illustrator, you can use features like actions and scripts.
Usability and Learning Curve
Adobe Creative Suite tools are for professional-level work. Therefore, you need to go through some learning before becoming an expert. However, the latest InDesign and Illustrator apps are easy-to-navigate than the previous versions.
Both InDesign and Illustrator offer a wide range of ready-to-use templates for free; you’ll find templates for several popular design projects. Moreover, Illustrator provides an interactive learning tool that helps you create basic designs like Pac-Man, Flower, Mobile Device, and so on.
Collaborative Work
InDesign has flexible and intuitive features for collaborative design projects. You don’t need to navigate away from your app to review design work or feedback. The Share for Review option enables you to initiate a collaborative discussion with the client and manage feedback from one place.
On InDesign, you can modify the document access to either Invite Only or Public Link to fit your project requirements.
Illustrator also supports collaborative work through the Illustrator cloud document feature. Apart from sharing, it goes a step ahead and gives you access to your work across many devices. Therefore, if you need to travel, resume your work on iPad, which you left unfinished on your desktop.
Online or Offline Publication Work
InDesign is a powerful tool for the publication of print or digital media. You can resize your document without leaving the actual file by using the tools from the Properties tab. You can edit the orientation, width, and height in real-time.
It also lets you reorganize the pages with a few clicks and even add a new page in the middle of the book without manual work. Additionally, using the Master Pages feature, you can create uniform columns, footers, headers, and margin guides for all the pages.
On the contrary, Illustrator is only suitable for one-page content publication tasks. You can use the ruler and grid tools for content alignment. The Character and Type tools help you to edit the typefaces and text styles.
Related: The Best Free Browser-Based Adobe Illustrator Alternatives
When to Use InDesign
The thumb rule is you need to use InDesign when your design project includes a lot of text per page, page numbers, and uniform page layout or designs. Hence, when you need to create designs for posters, flyers, postcards, eBooks, brochures, resumes, presentations, or menus, InDesign is the best choice.
This tool is also helpful when you need to create multiple documents from one master template. For example, InDesign's Data Merge feature lets you automate the business card production work. If you need to create cards for multiple clients, you can reuse a template instead of starting from scratch.
When to Use Illustrator
On the contrary, Illustrator is more of a drawing tool. It has various drawing features that enable you to utilize your imagination in creating artwork. As per Adobe, this tool is suitable to create content like typefaces, logos, icons, cursive font-based designs, charts, banners, infographics, and wallpapers.
Illustrator is also appropriate to create designs for app/website user interfaces, wireframes, or landing pages. The tool enables you to scale up or down content easily. You can also move around the content on the canvas through drag-and-drop actions.
Adobe InDesign vs. Illustrator: Be an All-Rounder
InDesign and Illusrator have a different set of features that, in combination deliver excellent results. You need a set of tools, rather than rather than reyling on one, to deliver the best work in a graphic design project.
If your goal is to become an expert graphic designer, it’s high time that you get hands-on training on the entire Adobe suite of graphics design tools, including InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
The Best Uses for Adobe InDesign
The Best Uses for Adobe InDesign
June 24, 2020
Adobe is truly the king of creative software. One of the many programs available is InDesign. While often combined with other creation programs, InDesign is a remarkable application for anyone interested in expertly crafting the layout of both electronic and print media. If you're new to the world of Adobe InDesign and are not sure if it is right for you (or if you subscribed to the complete Adobe package and have access to all the company's creative titles), here are some of the best uses for Adobe InDesign.
Email Marketing
Adobe InDesign is a powerful tool that helps you customize the layout of nearly anything. One of the most common uses of InDesign is when crafting new email marketing messages. Whether you're looking to send all the information within the email, attach a file via PDF, or you want the email to send visitors back to a landing page, with InDesign you can craft the perfect design for your information.
From adjusting the size of images and editing how text appears around the image, you have full control over how your email marketing campaign looks. You can create your own design or you can download templates from third-party designers. However you decide to craft your marketing campaign this is a fantastic way to keep it looking fresh.
Pamphlet
Attempting to design a pamphlet, mailer, or other basic literature you hand out to patrons via a word processor is about as frustrating as it comes. Word processors are not designed to thrive in this kind of design world. Adobe InDesign is. With the software you can not only adjust the information that appears in each cell of your foldable pamphlet, but you can account for areas of the page the printer likely won't reach. This way, you can avoid the dreaded cut-off.
eBook
Creating an eBook is a great way to grow your email list and to hand out helpful information online. However, creating the cover design for your eBook isn't as easy as it might seem. You might have the full word processor document saved and ready to go, but trying to line up all the images, the blurb for the back of the book, and other information via a word processor is difficult to do. Other creation programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are not made for this either.
With Adobe InDesign you can create the perfect layout for your digital book. It also works for real books, so if you're looking at self-publishing a physical book and want it to look just as professional as the books on the shelves of your local store, you'll need not only the front and back of the cover to look good, but the center portion that runs along the book's spine. When you use Adobe InDesign you will be able to perfectly produce the dimensions of the book and then adjust the content you place on each panel accordingly.
Whether digital or print, InDesign is the tool you need to use.
The Perfect Design Tool
This is one of those programs you're either going to absolutely need or you won't need at all. Thankfully, with the subscription feature offered by Adobe you can easily give it a try and see if it is something you're interested in. From designing custom emails for your next marketing campaign to pamphlets and other print literature, Adobe InDesign is a fantastic design tool to use in conjunction with other design programs like Illustration and Photoshop. If this is something you're interested in now is the perfect time to test out the title and see if it works for your designing needs.
