Join me at PePcon in San Francisco, May 14-16, 2012! When you sign up, use the code SFCM88, and get a $25 discount on the cost of any registration!

The schedule and slate of speakers is shaping up to be a full house; I can’t wait!

Hope to see you there!

Place the AI file in InDesign; the dieline spot color is added to the Swatches panel. So far, so good.
Select the dieline art and choose Edit Original.
In Illustrator, change the spec for the dieline spot color to, say, red, and save the file.

Return to InDesign. Although the Links panel shows that the link is updated, the swatch appearance and the artwork appearance have not changed.

The only way to fix this is to delete the artwork, then delete the swatch and and re-import the artwork.
NOTE: Sometimes it DOES work as it should (i.e., updating the link DOES change the appearance of the artwork and swatch.) But most of the time, it doesn’t.
And…If you use a genuine PANTONE spot color from one of the sanctioned color books, it behaves as it should: change to another PANTONE color in Illustrator, and InDesign will update the swatch and the placed artwork.

Since you’d probably be using the homegrown-spot approach only when you’re creating components such as dielines and varnish plates, the actual color really isn’t important: It’s only important that a plate is generated. But it’s still odd that either InDesign ignores the change, or Illustrator doesn’t successfully communicate it. Guess it’s Just One of Those Things.

In that spirit, I propose this change to the Buttons panel in InDesign, to be deployed in the Southeast U.S., where I live:

(We don’t click buttons down here in Georgia. We mash ‘em.)

Can the Star Trek TriCorder™ be far behind?

1. First, you have to be able to glom the pages together. Create a three-page document. Then, in the Pages Panel menu, UNcheck “Allow Document Pages to Shuffle.” At one time, this read “Keep Spread Together,” but that made too much sense. Essentially, InDesign insists on maintaining spreads: If a page is deleted from a multi-page spread, the following page “shuffles” up to fill the void. Unchecking the Shuffle option stifles this behavior, so you can stitch pages together and pull them apart as you wish.

2. Drag Page 2 up and glue it to Page 1 (below).

3. Select the Page Tool, and click on Page 2. In the Control Panel, use the Transform Proxy to anchor the left side of the page, then change the width of the page in the Width field in the Control Panel.

4. Drag Page 3 up and glue it to the right side of the spine. Place all your artwork and text, and you’re done (or so you think).

5. At about this time, in the Real World, your boss would call in a panic and tell you that the verbose author has submitted another chapter — you’ll have to change the width of the spine. While you’ll have to massage the artwork, changing the spine width is painless. Just select the spine page with the Page Tool, and enter the new width in the Control Panel. This will result in the spine either overlapping the front cover (p. 3), or leaving a gap between the spine and cover. But that’s easily rectified — just use the Page Tool to reposition the cover page, and you’re done.

Poking through the Adobe forums, though, I came across a thread on the same problem. One poster found that deleting the SING.InDesignPlugin cured the problem.

Sure enough, that did the trick! She is now SBBD-free, and InDesign launches and runs with no problem. I didn’t have this problem on either my desktop Mac or my laptop, so I don’t know why it affects some folks but not others. But I’m passing it on in hopes it will help others.

The plug-in is here:

Applications> Adobe> InDesign CS5> Plug-Ins> Text> SING.InDesignPlugin

The forum thread is here (search for the poster “lipstickdesign”):

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3024920

Most of these clients want to keep the “look” of their new InDesign documents in keeping with previous materials. But it’s tough to create templates when you’re still learning the program, so many of these companies have contracted with experienced designers to create the templates for them.

Since I like to see typical client files before training (so I have an idea of what they need to know), I often have the opportunity to deconstruct these supplied template files before the client starts using them. And it’s a good thing I do. With only one exception, I’ve found that the designers are not giving my clients a very good start! Clearly, they need to be asking more questions before cranking up InDesign.

Some considerations when building templates for a client:

Build to the correct size and format: Often, proposals are meant to be printed on in-house printers, single-sided, and placed into binders. So the template should be built as non-facing pages.

Build for the correct platform: Most construction-related companies use Windows computers; you should ask the client what platform they will use. If possible, design on the appropriate platform, using appropriate fonts. If you only have a Mac, and the client is on a PC, consider using the OpenType fonts that ship with InDesign; they’re cross-platform. And they’re automatically installed with InDesign (or the Suite), so you don’t have to worry about supplying the fonts and dealing with font-licensing issues. (For information about the fonts installed with Creative Suite 5, look here.) If the client is required to use corporate-approved fonts, and they’re not available in OpenType format, you might have to design provisionally with your own Mac fonts, then finish the document on a client computer with the correct fonts active.

Build for the correct version of InDesign: Yes, of course, CS5 is the current version (at this writing), but your client may have CS4 because it was purchased but not implemented for a while. (I see this a lot, and it’s just one of many reasons to not uninstall old software.) Ideally, you should build in the same version they’ll be using, but if you have to build in CS5, create a PDF before you export to InDesign Markup Language (.idml) for backsaving. Then you can check the converted file against the PDF on the client computer to make sure everything is correct.

Use styles: I’ll try to resist the urge to truly rant about this. I’m appalled how many files I get without a single style: everything is manually styled because “that’s so much easier.” Really?! Manually reformatting all those subheads on 64 pages is easier than changing a few settings in a style dialog? I don’t think so. Make it easy on yourself and the clients who will be using the template.

Use Master Pages: Put common elements and page numbers on Master pages. Documents such as proposals often need three masters: one for the cover, one for general pages, and one for section/project dividers. But ask the client what they need, and look for common formats in files they’ve supplied.

You should care about the client’s experience. As newcomers to InDesign, they may not be familiar with the concepts of styles, master pages, and general document setup, but that’s why they’ve turned to a professional designer. You can make life so much easier for them by providing the correct structure and raw materials for their success.

There. I feel better. Now, go out and make me proud.

To get started, choose Stroke Styles from the Stroke panel menu (or the Control Panel menu). Choose the Dash option (this won’t work with the Dotted or Stripe options). The settings don’t matter — what’s important is the name. Name your new custom style “Lights,” and click OK. Now you’ll see a little strand of Christmas lights at the bottom of your list of strokes. Whee!

Click OK again to exit the custom stroke style dialog. Now you can apply your festive new string of lights to a frame. While you can only apply a simple solid stroke to text, if you convert text to outlines, that restriction is lifted. Mwah-ha-ha.

Create some text (preferably bold enough to give your lights some elbow room), then select the text frame and choose Type > Create Outlines. Choose the Lights stroke style from the Stroke pull-down in the Control panel, and set the weight of the stroke sufficiently high to make the lights visible (probably somewhere in the 5-10 point range). You can apply a fill color, but your choice of stroke color will be ignored. If you choose a Gap color, it will appear behind the lights, filling the width of the stroke weight you chose.

I’m not saying it’s right. This may fall into the JBYCDMYS category (Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should), but that just adds to the fun. All we need now is Debbie Gibson Boone singing “You Light Up My Type.”

You can’t select bulbs and change their color in InDesign, but you can select the art and copy/paste into Illustrator and modify it there. Then just paste back into InDesign.
By the way, there are others: try creating stroke styles named Feet, Woof, and Happy.

This feature ensures that the correct fonts are used when you package the job and send it to a commercial printer. But what if the printer has an established way of organizing customer files that breaks up the set? Many prepress departments have standardized directories similar to this:

Customer Name
–Job Number
—-Page Layout Files (working)
—-Support Art
—-Fonts
—-Original Customer Files

In this arrangement, the original InDesign file is inside the “Original Customer Files” folder, and its little friends the fonts are in the Fonts folder. And a modified InDesign file (altered to fix any problems or refine the file for the printer’s workflow) is in the “Page Layout Files (working)” folder. There’s no line of communication between this second-generation working InDesign file and the fonts folder. When you open the file, it assumes it’s fontless, and you get the “Missing Fonts” message and the dreaded Pepto-Bismol® highlighting.

But there’s a workaround: Place an alias (or shortcut) to the fonts folder in the same directory as the working InDesign file. Just make sure the stunt-double folder is named Document Fonts (not “Document Fonts alias” or “Shortcut to Document Fonts”) — the name of the original folder doesn’t matter. The InDesign file is happy again, you get to keep your folder structure, and all is well in Fontworld.

(Thanks to Rick @ Garner Printing for asking about this.)

Same thing goes for back-saving files for earlier versions of software; I always caution designers to avoid this if possible. However, I realize that designers often encounter mixed versions of applications, especially when freelancers are involved. I try to always keep files in their native habitat, in terms of software version and platform. The notion of opening up an innocent PC Illustrator CS5 file in a Mac CS4 version of Illustrator makes me twitch.

I’ve had my convictions strengthened this week; I’m working on a book in InDesign CS5, but the publisher wants the final files in InDesign CS4. I’m taking advantage of the Track Changes feature in CS5 to work with the editor, and that’s working great. However, when I export to InDesign Markup (IDML) — the only way back to CS4 — things fall apart. Paragraph formatting goes wonky. Styles based on other styles have forgotten the overrides that separated them from the parent styles, and the original formatting (mainly nested styles that I’d un-nested) bubbles back up. Like a zombie movie.

I don’t recall this happening when I back-saved from InDesign CS4 to CS3. I don’t know if I was lucky, or if back-saves have become more dangerous in the new version. The moral of the story? If you are forced to time-travel, make a PDF before you jump. Place the PDF in a separate layer in the converted file, and turn its visibility off and on, so you can check for issues.

Be careful out there. Watch for dinosaurs.