InDesign is another component of the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem, available as part of the whole library or as an individual purchase. The software‘s features is specific to publishing and designing online publications, brochures, creating info sheets, and similar materials. Adobe InDesign provides extensive access to stock images, supports team collaboration with robust tools and features, supports a great range of formats, and has access to regular updates and design features.
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Segment |
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Deployment | Desktop Mac, Desktop Windows, On-Premise Linux |
Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
I love InDesign! There's no way I could do my job without the InDesign program. I regularly make newsletters for my organization with this software. In the past, I had tried to do newsletters in Microsoft Word or free sites, but those options come nowhere close to the power of InDesign. The intricacy of the program is so helpful for making professional-quality newsletters.
The program has a learning curve. I needed to watch training videos before I could use all of the features of the program. When I tried to figure it out in the beginning on my own, it was definitely frustrating.
We were previously paying graphic designers for our newsletters AND paying them for multiple rounds of revisions. I can now create my own newsletters without having to pay a contractor. Also, if we decide to use a contractor for a newsletter or mailing, I can edit the design without having to wait for a contractor to make changes.
Ease of use - but since I've been an user since I left Quark - remember that little number.
Every time they update the damn thing. Then I can't find something! And how the heck do you make a glossery?
Manual, Flyers, epubs etc.....
I do a lot of layout design and typography. Although there are many desktop publishing programs, I would never choose any other program! Having tools, like the ability to kern letters, may seem small but they can make the biggest difference in design. It really is the most dynamic program, getting into every detail of desktop publishing.
I genuinely love everything about InDesign. Makes my work so easy! The only thing I would say is that some of the default settings don't really show it's full potential so you really have to search to customize the interface for your working environment.
I create marketing brochures to raise funds, send out company newsletters to keep donors updated, create email marketing campaigns etc. I can design everything to be visually appealing so donors want to interact with us.
I love Adobe InDesign because it takes my documents from basic to exceptional.
I dislike some of the functions. Some of them can be hard to select and use.
We are solving the issue of having a complex order form for our customers - it is so much easier to create one on indesign (since we use physical handouts and mailouts).
I love the ability to go from paper to digital when creating a layout. It's extremely simple to use and get your idea out!
I dislike its limited direct integration with other Adobe Products, such as illustrator.
We use InDesign for all of our marketing collateral/proposals and UX design.
I use InDesign primarily to design inserts for my planner, brochures, advertisements, newsletters, and fliers. I really love how the guides let you know if an item is centered without forcing you to place the item there.
I dislike that the default measurement is picas and not inches, and I wish that the keyboard shortcuts for all Adobe products were the same across all of their programs.
By using InDesign, we're able to avoid paying design fees to other companies to make brochures and fliers for us, and we can edit them in-house and send them to print sooner.
I love the versatility of this software. It gives me the ability to create whatever my company needs for promotional and marketing materials, in-house manuals, and client tools.
I do feel that I've run into more issues lately with the program unexpectedly closing while in the midst of working on a project. Luckily, most often the progress of the project is saved automatically, but this certainly interrupts the workflow.
InDesign is empowering us to handle all of our design in-house, on our own timeline, by individuals who are engaged in the day-to-day of the business.
I like that we can streamline processes by having templates saved in InDesign which allows us to make minor changes and insert images in the same format without having to make a new document every single time.
There isn't anything that stands out that I dislike about using this program.
We need to be able to send out documents to our customers in a quick manner while customizing certain portions to each individual customer. The templates that we have created in InDesign allows us to streamline this process and be efficient with our time.
I've been using Adobe Indesign forever! Since I began using it in college, it is the way that I fell in love with graphic design and layout. To me, it is so user-friendly and way less scary than something like Photoshop. It is so easy to layout documents, brochures, magazines and more. Literally my fave!
There is seriously nothing that I dislike about this program. It may be hard to get used to at first if you've never used an Adobe product before, but it is extremely easy to catch on to and Adobe provides so much help and a lot of tutorials online to make the experience easier.
Adobe Indesign really just allows me to create really well-designed and beautiful flyers and brochures. I always get compliments on my designs.
The ability to design within the program and import images. Love that I can design a double sided flier or a large catalog.
I can't think of anything that I dislike.
We use it for manuals or laying out fliers. Easy to apply bleeds and margins. Ability to keep design consistency within booklets.
I like InDesign ability to incorporate a wide range of graphic and typographic elements, and the tremendous tools available for sharing and controlling those elements. In addition, it provides the ability to customize your workspace to suit the creation of print materials, ebooks, displays, and on and on. It also outputs in a very wide range of formats. It's my go-to hub of graphic design and production.
There's very little to dislike in my experience. Probably the one thing that I dislike is that I've become so dependent on it as a key element of my graphic design and layout work that I am lost without it.
I have to prepare a range of documents that are used for print as well as interactive PDFs. InDesign allows me to create one master, and then output in a range of formats. In addition, I can create large display materials (banners, posters), and then duplicate and modify those designs for small materials (postcards, brochures). In short, it saves me hours of time, and keeps all the various elements linked and tracked.
I like the automatic tools that help you align everything perfectly. It is so easy with all of the guides to make sure everything just clicks into place. I like the built in tools to help you stay on top of errors. When dealing with that many pages and text and images, it is simply amazing that there are tools in place to help you stay on top of overrun text and low-quality images, etc.
I dislike having to control the quality of the photos, I wish it would just assume that I want high-quality and give the option to downgrade the quality if I'd like, instead of vice versa how it currently is laid out. I also dislike how difficult it can sometimes be to grab the photo inside the bounding box to move it or adjust it just so without accidentally grabbing the bounding box 5 times first.
It provides the ability to create high-quality publications that will look good and work well for each and every purpose. It also provides a great integration of systems where everything from text to images to illustrations can all come together seamlessly. I can't even imagine a world without it.
I've been using InDesign for over 10 years now. When it comes to laying out text, it's simply the best. It doesn't matter if I'm laying out one page or one thousand, I will always start with InDesign. There are a ton of features to make your life easier when creating layouts, but five powerful features stand out to me the most: 1) Master layouts: You can add elements to the master spread, and it will be copied to every spread (old or new). This serves as the base layer of each page, allowing you to add things like logos, design elements, page numbering and more. And if you have a page that's an outlier, it's just as easy to override it. 2) Grid, gutters and bleeds. You can create columns and rulers with completely customizable gutters, which help you maintain design consistency through the whole layout. If you add these to the master layout, you instantly have a grid system for your whole project. If you require them, bleeds can also be automatically added to the print file so that your printer knows where to trim the pages. 3) Character/paragraph styles. I feel like this might be a hidden gem, but the character/paragraph style tab allows you to create font styles (face, weight, kerning, etc) that are applied throughout a project. If you want to change all of your paragraph headers to bold, you can just edit the style and it's applied everywhere! 4) Text overflow tool. This is one of the most basic tools in InDesign but possibly the most powerful for layout work. You can paste all of your text in a single text node, and then split that node up into multiple, smaller boxes across many pages! You can move and resize the boxes freely to fit the text in exactly how you want it. 5) Preflighting/packaging. All of the tools required to send a document to print are built into InDesign, including the ability to generate a folder that contains all of your fonts, images and other assets. This can be sent to a printer, and they can print your project directly from it, so that none of the assets are missing. Or, if you'd prefer, you can simply export to a print-ready PDF. There's so much more InDesign has to offer too, from the built-in asset manager to the ability to export interactive PDFs.
Sometimes really large projects can take a while to load, or will crash while scrolling through. This has gotten better in recent years, though.
All of our layout work is done in InDesign. We can easily create projects over a hundred pages long and send them to the printer with confidence that they will turn out perfectly. It's also my go-to for any kind of single page project like a flyer or newsletter template.
I originally came from a background where I always used either Photoshop or Microsoft Word for printed flyers, postcards, etc. Discovering InDesign with my Adobe CC subscription and learning to use it has been a game changer. It makes blocking space and formatting text and images a seamless process and the learning curve isn't too bad if you already use other Adobe products.
The layering isn't quite as intuitive as I'd like.
Creating and designing printed materials with InDesign has been a game changer.
I love the templates that InDesign provides. It creates a wonderful framework to jump off from in order to work on a book or multi-page design. The features and tools for alignment are very helpful. I also love using InDesign to create wireframes.
I would love if InDesign had some features similar to photoshop such as a tool to edit photos or cut out objects so that I do not have to go back and forth between programs.
It is a tool we use to design multi-page designs.
I love the freedom to design emails, posters, billboards, and the like exactly how I want to! I don't have to worry about sticking to a template and can move things and resize them however I see fit. This is by far, my #1 program for graphic design. It is absolutely invaluable.
I haven't noticed any major problems so far. It does require a fair bit of computing power and occasionally stalls out if I have too much open at once, but upon reopening my data is always still there!
It helps me created eye-catching graphic designs to help sell products and promote events.
Being able to use CC Libraries, the easy type formatting and placing of files. The tools are easy to use and very functioning for what you need them for. You can easily make any kind of sign or menu or even a book in the program, it has so many multi use functions the other progams dont offer.
That it is missing some functions Illustrator has, that I think would be utilized just as well in Indesign
We make all our advertising for our signs, menus, posters, banners and using the CC Libraries has allowed us to create templates to make our design faster, so when we are only changing out prices we have work done very quickly in half the time as opposed to starting the design from scratch. It allows us to save our logos and any other images we might need to quickly access. It has made our sign shop and design team more efficient and streamlined.
I love the quick key commands, organized and easy-to-use workspace menus, and the dark workspace background. I also love being able to switch between normal and preview screen modes -- something that I haven't found out how to do with Illustrator yet.
At certain times, the type tool glitches -- it may just be my computer. The program also slows down when working on larger sized projects. I also wish pathfinder was a little more convenient.
Organization Cleaner Layout of Marketing Materials
I definitely like the interactive pdf export feature in this software. It’s perfect for exporting documents with links to emails, websites, etc. that will be shared electronically.
Figuring out the best print settings for multi page spreads can be difficult at first. It took a bit of tweaking with settings to print a booklet the first couple times.
InDesign is simple enough that even those with a less trained eye for layout and design can still put together functional and appealing spreads and documents. Once you get moving with the software, it’s one you’ll want to go back to for your layout needs.
InDesign is by far my favorite Adobe program for several reasons. Though InDesign is not generally thought of as a program to use for digital media but rather for print, it provides all of the tools necessary to design pages and create visual layouts to be used for both. It is the most simple way to create formatted documents containing multiple pages, layouts that combine text and images, and those containing significant amounts of text.
Occasionally InDesign will go through these odd "crashing" phases where it will consistently crash for days.
I use InDesign for all of my companies design projects because it is so well rounded and easy to use.