While organizing simple, basic information in an impactful way may be a routine task—it doesn’t have to be boring! Learn how to create clean, professional infographics, organizational charts, and tables in Adobe InDesign. We’ll cover best practices for organizing data and visualizing information in an easy-to-read format, while also diving into powerful tools and techniques that streamline your workflow.

You’ll learn how to:

• Master tables in InDesign, and discover scripts to overcome their limitations
• Unlock the power of object styles to streamline formatting and ensure consistency
• Strategically choose colors that enhance visual impact while maintaining readability
• Efficiently use paragraph and character styles to automate formatting and save time
• Source and implement picture and dingbat fonts for unique, eye-catching designs

In the Intro to GREP session, we learned the fundamentals of working with GREP in InDesign. Now, it’s time for some in-depth GREP expressions to put into your toolkit. When it comes to automating text in your InDesign documents, using GREP can give you that boost you need to improve your accuracy, consistency, and productivity.

• Learn how to master the “lookaround”
• Rearranging text
• How to generate figure placeholders using captions

Learn the fastest, most powerful, and most reliable way to find (and replace!) text in your InDesign documents. We’ll cut through acronyms and spoon out alphabet soup — enough to give you a taste of when and how to use GREP in both design and production for accuracy and timesaving.

Topics include:

• GREP searches vs. GREP styles
• Foundational constructions
• Findings big and small
• Automatic icons, tidy numbers
• Batch processing, further resources

In this session, we’ll dive into the hidden treasures of InDesign’s layers, where creativity meets organization. With this often-underused tool, we’ll discover how layers simplify your workflow by keeping content organized and harmonious. Layers offer unparalleled flexibility, from safeguarding headers and footers to watermarking, guides, and in-house printing. Get ready to uncover the hidden potential of InDesign’s layers and supercharge your design game!

Topics Include:

• Arranging multiple grids and guides on different layers for flexibility
• Protecting key elements on locked layers
• Adding notes and instructions on a non-printing layer
• Creating special-use layers for your workflow

Ready to turn ordinary data into extraordinary—and functional—tables in InDesign? In this dynamic session Laurie Ruhlin will give you the keys for creating, formatting, and editing tables with ease! Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned designer, this workshop will improve your skills and transform the way you present information.

In addition to crafting clean, functional tabular data and jazzing up tables with custom styles, borders, and colors, you’ll learn to:

• Adjust table dimensions, rows, and columns for a perfect fit
• Create table and cell styles to ensure consistency across your layouts
• Use keyboard shortcuts and pro tricks to save time and keep tables consistent
• Format those pesky table borders and grid lines, as well as headers and footers
• Work with complex tables that thread through multiple pages