The InDesigner

Checkboxes and radio buttons and comb fields…oh my! After the podcast’s longest hiatus ever, and a cliffhanger gap worthy of The Sopranos, The InDesigner returns with a new episode that (finally!) finishes off the topic of designing smart for Acrobat forms.

In this episode, I take a look at adding form elements to an InDesign layout to create Acrobat-friendly checkboxes, radio buttons and comb fields, all of which can be achieved with a little help from anchored objects, GREP find/change and tables.

You may also notice new feature added to the podcast starting with this episode: chapters. You can now jump right to a specific part of the lesson using the chapters built into the video file.

Watch the episode here (15:30 | 45.5MB), or you can subscribe via iTunes.

Posted in GREP, Layout, Podcasts-Video, Styles, Tables, Uncategorized | 10 Comments » |

The latest isssue of InDesign Magazine (#19-September 2007) features a cover story by yours truly about designing tables in InDesign. The focus is very much on the design challenges particular to tables, and how not to let the speed and ease-of-use of InDesign’s table features stop you from taking the time to improve your rows and columns with time-honored design principles. The article is also posted online as a free PDF download on CreativePro.com.

But do yourself a real favor and take advantage of my promo code — “theindesigner” — when you subscribe to InDesign Magazine. You’ll get a two-year subscription, plus every back issue. It’s probably the best money you can spend on improving your InDesign knowledge.

Posted in News/Announcements, Tables | 1 Comment » |

When you design 4 full-page ads, 19 charts and graphs, and 123 page layouts in 24 working days, you really see how InDesign’s features make a big project much more manageable. Having just completed a 256-page magazine, I decided that this episode would take inventory of some of the ways that InDesign … (read more)

Posted in Layout, Podcasts-Video, Styles, Tables, Type & Text | 4 Comments » |

In this episode, I wanted to include — but couldn’t for timing reasons — information about a couple of great table utilities for InDesign. One is a $24.95 shareware script called PopTabFmClip.js (short for Populate Table From Clipboard) which will paste updated data into a pre-formatted table and preserve the formatting. The other is a more expensive (but proportionally more powerful) $299 plug-in from Teacup Software called Table & Cell Styles Pro that adds Paragraph/Character/Object Style formatting capabilities to Tables, maintains dynamic links back to the origonal data source, and more.

Posted in Show Notes, Tables | 17 Comments » |

Add bells and whistles to your rows and columns in the conclusion of the three-part Tables series. Examples of real-world design projects that feature tables are used to demonstrate placing graphics and shapes into tables as … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Tables | 14 Comments » |

The second installment of the video series covering Tables gets down to the smallest details. This “intermediate” episode covers the settings you can apply in the Table Options and Cell Options dialog boxes, how InDesign differentiates between Header, Footer and Body rows, how to automate … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Tables | 1 Comment » |

If you haven’t already discovered InDesign’s robust table-creation feature, you’re going to be quite impressed by what it can do. If you’re familiar with tables, but haven’t used them that much, you’re going to find that the level of design control you have over tables — and the ways in which you can use them — is far beyond … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Tables | 3 Comments » |