This Week in InDesign Articles, Number 33
It’s a brand new InDependent Week! Time is short this week, but I figured I’d better unload a few of these links atcha’ before they get too old:
- Okay, so this first one has nothing to do with InDesign, but if you’re into building charts with Illustrator, you gotta’ check this detailed step-by-step out.
- Nigel French’s new edition of his excellent InDesign Typography book is out… or just about to be out. Buy it from Amazon to support InDesignSecrets.
- Check out this great color theory poster that Rufus Deuchler pointed out. I think it’s best against the white background.
- The folks at VIGC have updated their preflight profiles for CS5, plus added several more new ones.
- Harbs at In-Tools.com has updated Column Flow. His blog post about it is interesting because he goes into details about why CS5’s span columns feature is lacking in comparison.
- This movie of “how Shift Magazine is made” is fun… It’s a good reminder, in the midst of all this crazy interactive stuff, that printing presses and binderies are still important!
- On the other hand, if you’re into epub and ebooks, this is a nice little article that brings up some important issues.
- Adobe’s interactive digital magazine solution is coming, apparently, and partners are lining up to say they will support it, including MEI’s K4 software.
Well, that’s enough for now. The summertime is both heating up and slowing down, but we’ll keep the tips and techniques coming!
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The tutorial about charts in Illustrator proves that Adobe must come up urgently with a solution within illustrator to avoid 24,785 steps in making a decent chart or graph.
What he said!!! Far too inconveniant and old-fashioned!
InDesign is improving every time, but Illustrator is a bit stuck!
I’m confused…as usual. How does buying Nigel’s book from Amazon support InDesign Secrets? I ask this just after I ordered the book from Amazon.
I’m with them about charts and graphs! That may be a good request for Adobe…A new CS (sub)program or spin-off just for charts and graphs. Sort of like Flash Catalyst.
@Jennie: In theory, Amazon pays us a tiny percentage of the book price when you buy (if your purchase comes from a clickthrough on that link, which includes a small affiliate code in it).
Meanwhile, there is NO doubt that the world needs a good charting solution for professional publishers…
I agree about Adobe creating a software program for creating graphs. This would be a wonderful addition to the creative suite.
I have 5 different charts I have to create quarterly for my clients newsletter. I bring in the clients numbers from their excel files into Illustrator then create the charts and then use them as images into my InDesign layout. Illustrator’s help files on making charts is extremely poor. I thought that this detailed tutorial is exactly what Adobe should be putting out there.
I wish there was better information on how to set up the excel file to allow Illustrator to translate the data. I find that people don’t like to cross-train with software.
One of your more memorable posts was Anne Marie telling us the things that MS word will do to files when translated into InDesign. She gave us tips on how to prevent those mishaps. Excellent!
Cross-training is also needed when trying to use data merge.