Several newbie questions

Report · Dec 16, 2023

I have a marketing brochure designed for 8.5" x 11" print format, that I'm trying to change to a mobile-friendly format. Trying to use XD to preview & troubleshoot, running into some issues / questions.

1.) Is it possible to preview, on the same monitor at the same time, how the document will look on multiple phones? NOT plugging in multiple physical phones, but having the simulated frames on my main computer monitor.

I can create multiple templates on the screen, but I don't see any way to "mirror" them in realtime.

If there is NO way to do this, can anyone suggest an alternative that will let me see how my design will look on the iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel, etc, at the same time?

2.) Attempting to preview the document on an Android phone (physically plugged in), creates 2 more issues:

2a.) The document doesn't update in realtime.

2b.) It displays a message about missing fonts, and renders everything in the system defaut font.

3.) I see that iPhone and Android phones have very different screen sizes. Is there a common "average" template or size, or a "best practices" approach, that's recommended for designing visual materials when you don't know the user's screen parameters? Or it gets resized automatically, and all I need to worry about is the aspect ratio?

Any advice is appreciated!

Report · Dec 18, 2023

Hi, I guess viewing in 2-3 popular screen sizes for both ios and Android can be an optimal approach for a website/app design (since in responsive design we use some different placements etc for certain sizes like max-width:760px etc), when it comes to brochures/print materials since the width is going to be maxed on both sizes, only vertical spacing/area to be scrolled is going to be different so you can check also for them, since I don't think that's going to be make too much of a difference, just my opinion, hope this helps!

Report · Dec 18, 2023

That's a good point, but it's not always a smooth-scrolling situation - depending on the device & default PDF reader, it may show it as a paginated layout, not scrolling. I've run into that already. So I'd like to keep it to the same page height if possible, set one "frame" and go according to that. Otherwise, if I make a "huge column of text and inline pictures" type of design, and then the user has a paginated viewer, it will cut the text in strange ways and the whole thing looks like garbage.

But mostly my issue is trying to find a way to simultaneously show 3-4 mobile layouts at the same time.

Report · Dec 19, 2023

I understand, I can't think of any ways of "mirror"ing the same design in multiple resolutions simultaneously so wanted to share my opinions about single resolution related issues (I agree with you creating multiple templates on the same artboard but that's not updating designs in real time, as you mentioned, so). About PDF related issues, I also used XD for generating some PDFs but I guess designers with the most amount of experience with it might be on Acrobat and In Design communities so I'd also suggest asking a question there (if you haven't already):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/ct-p/ct-acrobat?page=1&sort=latest_replies&lang=all&tabid=all
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/ct-p/ct-indesign?page=1&sort=latest_replies&lang=all&tabid=a...