David Blatner (@dblatner) & Anne-Marie Concepción (@amarie) are veteran graphic designers and software instructors specializing in Adobe InDesign. The duo founded InDesign Secrets — the #1 Resource for all things InDesign — and host The InDesign Secrets Podcast. They also take the show on the road, organizing The InDesign Conference and the Print & e-Publishing Conference (PePcon).
Together, we discuss bad InDesign habits, underrated features, and how InDesign is evolving (or not) based on community feedback.
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- Download The Busy Creator Podcast, Episode 38 (MP3, 37:45, 18.3 MB)
- Download The Busy Creator Podcast, Episode 38 (OGG, 37:45, 33.1 MB)
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Show Notes & Links
- David Blatner
- Anne-Marie Concepción
- Previous 3-Way Episodes on The Busy Creator Podcast #4 and #11
- Three-way Calling
- InDesign Magazine
- Anne-Marie had aspirations to become a teacher … until she met Mac
- LaserWriter
- Font/DA Mover
- ClarisWorks
“As a teacher of software to adults, you could charge whatever you wanted.”
—Anne-Marie Concepción
- Design Geek, an early newsletter-turned-blog from Anne-Marie
- David is an author, but NOT a novelist
- QuarkXPress, powerhouse page layout software in the 90s
- Aldus PageMaker, predecessor to InDesign
- Armin Vit’s episode of The Busy Creator Podcast
- Remote Keyless Entry on your car
- S-Shaped Curve aka Sigmoid Function, for learning
“The hardest part is not learning the feature, it's remembering to use the feature.”
—Anne-Marie Concepción
- The Paint Format tool in MS Word
- Pet Peeve: Using Character Styles where a better tool is more appropriate
- Paragraph Styles panel should be called “Text Styles”
- Unsharp Masking or Appearance Panel — wishlist features for InDesign
- Smart Objects created in InDesign should be placeable in Photoshop
- ePUB – the open-source standard for ebooks
- “Dangling Modifiers” Prescott’s name for features unbuilt or errors-not-fixed since 1996
- Gradient Mesh or 3D Revolve in Illustrator
- Prescott is a member of the Pre-release Team for Illustrator
- Scrubby Sliders in InDesign – an oft-requested feature from Photoshop
- Anne-Marie invented “Mr. Spanky” aka Pan Tool
- “The Donut” aka Content Grabber
- Real World InDesign by David Blatner on Amazon
- Lynda.com videos
Tools
- Adobe InDesign
- A two-button mouse
- The Apple Menu
- Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop Elements, Muse
- Adobe Dreamweaver, which can’t open ePUB files, btw
- InDesignSecrets.com has a ton of resources, downloads, tutorials, videos, forums, etc.
- Adobe InCopy
- InDesign Secrets Podcast, and the Obscure InDesign Feature of The Week!
Techniques
- Use the Text Frame in InDesign rather than an image frame
- Utilize GREP styling and Text Styles more generally
- Use Quick Apply
- Remove Character Styles and replace with Paragraph Styles for longer passages of text
- Use InDesign for page layout … NOT ILLUSTRATOR (Japan) and definitely NOT PHOTOSHOP (psychopaths)
- Learn ePUB from Anne-Marie, she’s the best (fixed-layout or flowable)
Habits
- Repeatedly use features so they become a habit
- Continue to learn by watching videos, experimenting, reading articles
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