Converting large catalog from illustratior to indesign

Report · Jul 23, 2024

Hello,

I am working on a company product catalog that we more or less finished all the grafics for. Its quite a lot of custom designed pages (more than 70) with vector grafic, transitions and text.

Now i need to add interactive elements like menu, buttons, logo selections and filtrations, videos hyperlinks etc.

I have seen a lot of people doing this in Indesign and need a way to convert the entire document to indesign. I probably dont need to be able to edit the grafic designs of the pages any more just to add the interactive things.

How can i do this ? Is there any effitient way ? Also i kinda need the ability to add new pages when i finish this document when new products arive, but that will probably be using a template of a diferent product to add a new one just swaping text and image.

thanks.

Report · Jul 23, 2024

I don't like to say this, but it sounds like you have little or no experience in either InDesign or catalog Design and you've chosen the wrong tool to do the majority of the work becuase you are comfortable in Illustrator, but perhaps I've misinterpreted what you have done so far.

The good news is that the work you've alread done can easily be brought into InDesign using the File > Place... command to import it as artwork onto a catalog page. Text and other elements can also be added to that page directly in InDesign.

The normal workflow for this sort of work is to create free-standing graphic elements in Illustrator, import them into a layout in InDesign, and add everything else there. InDesign may well be the most complex of Adobe's tools and has a fairly steep learning curve for complex work such as you describe. If you don't know what you are doing already I strongly suggest you look into some training, either a local class or there are some excellent videos on Linked-in Learning. You will also get excellent help here when you have more specific questions.

Report · Jul 23, 2024

Well small problem is our CEO that requested a very specific catalogue. Each mashine has completely diferent page where the photo of the mashine is embeded in the grafic of that specific page design and each page looks very diferent from others. the have similar colors and tones but that kinda is the last part of the similarities. names of the mashines look like its cut our from the paper leaving just outlines with shadow undearneath. More or less each page is 95% grafic with few text blocks.

If i understood it well basicaly neither of the tool is made for this style of catalogs and i will have to import each page separately by File > Place command. Well that is sad. I hoped adobe finaly after all these years had a posibility to just take a file and open in in indesign and edit what i need there and then just go back to illutrator similar how it can be done with photoshop.

I guess there is no tool like that on the market yet.

Report · Jul 23, 2024

Since I have no idea what your pages look like now I can't really offer concrete advice, but there is no problem combining lots of separate graphic elements on a single page in InDesign, allowing you to tweak positioning or even change an element.

If you Place your current Illustrator pages into InDesign now, they are linked, not embedded and you can continue to edit them in Illustrator and thoise changes will be reflected in InDesign.

Report · Jul 23, 2024

@Jakub38761880p8jj

As @Peter Spier suggested - either Place and Link - do not Embed - your whole graphics and mask - in InDesign - things that you want to make interactive - or move those elements to a separate layer(s) first and then you can either "disable" them in Illustrator before placing - or you can "disable" those Layers in InDesign after placing.

"Disable" = hide / make invisible: