Sessions

Essential InDesign Scripts, Part 3: Customizing and Scripting Fundamentals

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Using InDesign without scripts is like cooking without spices—you can do it, but why would you?! In Part 1 and Part 2 of this three-session tutorial, we’ve looked at a wide variety of must-have InDesign scripts. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level!

Topics include:

  • How to edit a script to customize it for what you need (it’s often not as hard as you’d think)
  • First steps in writing your own scripts
  • Obscure (but useful!) scripts you have to know about
  • Scripting resources

8 Essential Steps You Should Take Before Printing or Exporting

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It feels so good to finish a layout… but wait! Before you export “myPage.Final_B_v2_ReallyFinalThisTime.indd” to PDF, or send it off to get printed, take just a moment and walk through this checklist of Eight Essential Steps. It doesn’t have to take long, and you’ll save so much time in the long run.

Session topics include:

  • Building (and using!) custom preflight profiles
  • The Ink Manager (it’s far more important than it sounds)
  • Critical PDF best practices
  • Scripts and automated checks

Remote and Virtual Workflows for Design and Creatives, Part 2

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In Part 1 of this two-part session, we explored a wide spectrum of remote workflows. Now, let’s tackle editorial and review! The field of web-based collaboration and review is hot, hot, hot! If emailing PDFs out to remote clients and authors for review is slowing you down, you’ll be glad to learn about these newer, more streamlined alternatives.

This session includes:

  • Initiating and managing comment and review using Acrobat versus Creative Cloud services
  • Best practices for managing Acrobat comments
  • Discovering how InDesign’s Share for Review is better (and worse) than Acrobat
  • Using 3rd-party cloud-based review services like GoProof, Tweak, and PageProof
  • Using linked Word files for fast, round-trip copyediting with WordsFlow
  • When InCopy is the solution
  • Using Google Docs with InDesign

You’ll be so encouraged and energized by what you learn, that you’ll be fixing your own workflows as soon as you get back to the office!

Essential InDesign Scripts, Part 2: Text and Typography

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In Part 1 of this three-part scripting-extravaganza, we looked at the fundamentals of using scripts. Now, let’s discover a wide array of scripts you just have to have when working with text and type.

Topics include:

  • Super-powered find/change and text cleanup
  • Inserting special (but commonly used) characters
  • Splitting and merging frames
  • Working with footnotes and endnotes

Integrating InDesign and WordPress

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InDesign is the most popular page-layout app in the world. WordPress is the most popular web app in the world. And many of us need to publish content to both! How can you easily move text and images from InDesign to WordPress and other popular web content management systems? Or move content from WordPress to InDesign? This session will show you how!

Topics include:

  • How to preserve formatting and meaning while moving text
  • Images: the biggest challenge
  • How to leverage InDesign’s HTML export capabilities
  • Plug-ins and add-ons that can help
  • Custom workflows for cross-media publishing

From Sketch to Mockup: Designing in a Cross-App World

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Stop thinking about using “an app” and start thinking about using “the app ecosystem”! Join us for a fun and wild ride through the “cross-app world,” where you’ll get to see how to implement the power of working with Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign together in a practical and productive way.  Keep your focus on the design by quickly changing apps and managing assets with the power of the CC Libraries! Are you ready to empower your workflow? Let’s get started!

Topics include:

  • Building vector sketches in Illustrator
  • Creating dedicated libraries to store all your project’s assets in one place
  • Launching your favourite apps directly from the CC Libraries panel
  • Implementing the power of working with the Creative Cloud apps  together in your everyday workflow!
  • Creating a product mockup to professionally present your InDesign art

Remote and Virtual Workflows for Design and Creatives

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For many designers and creatives, working remotely, away from the office, has been really difficult… and remote/virtual will be an ongoing reality for many of us for a long time to come. Fortunately, there are editorial and review solutions that can make your life easier, and work flow faster.

The field of web-based collaboration and review is hot, hot, hot! If emailing PDFs out to remote clients and authors for review is slowing you down, you’ll be glad to learn about these newer, more streamlined alternatives.

This session includes:

  • Initiating and managing comment and review using Acrobat versus Creative Cloud services
  • Best practices for managing Acrobat comments
  • Discovering how InDesign’s Share for Review is better (and worse) than Acrobat
  • Using linked Word files for fast, round-trip copyediting with WordsFlow
  • When InCopy is the solution
  • Using Google Docs with InDesign

You’ll be so encouraged and energized by what you learn, that you’ll be fixing your own workflows as soon as you get back to your remote team!

Essential InDesign Scripts, Part 1: Images, Layout, and Workflow

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If you’re not using scripts with InDesign, you are not being efficient. And scripts are really easy! In fact, a bunch of useful scripts even ship with InDesign—you just need to know where to look for them.

Join us in this fast-paced session to learn:

  • Where to find must-have scripts
  • The fastest and easiest way to install a script and run it
  • Free scripts for managing your layouts, building calendars, and
  • Amazing scripts you need for graphics and images

This session is Part 1 in a three-part tutorial. See Part 2 here.

Fast Fixes for MS Word and Other Text Messes

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Unless you’re the one writing the copy for the InDesign layouts you design, chances are someone else is using MS Word and handing the file off to you to flow in. And there’s the rub: Two different software companies. Two different text engines. Two different ways to format text. And it’s up to you to solve it!

In this fast-paced session, we’ll show you how to quickly fix the most common problems that you likely encounter. You’ll be amazed to see how most of the solutions are easy, free, and built right into the program.

This session includes:

  • Importing Word files the smart way: choosing the best options
  • Cleaning up formatting glitches after the first import
  • Dealing with unwanted interlopers like embedded graphics and ugly hyperlinks
  • Suspect the Word file is damaged? There’s a fix for that!

Awesome GREP Tips & Tricks

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Once you get started with GREP, you keep finding more and more uses for it! We’re picking out ten amazing GREP tricks to share with you. Note: while these are advanced tips, you don’t have to be advanced to use them — any InDesign user can copy and paste them from the handouts to achieve great results!

This session includes:

  • Using GREP with powerful Find/Change and batch scripts
  • Finding Unicode ranges
  • Powerful but simple undocumented codes