Creating a capability statement from multiple indesign files

Report · Apr 12, 2022

I'm trying to find the best practice way to manage our InDesign documents for capability statements.

Essentialy all our capability documents are made up of a customised cover (we change the client name/project name and feature image), customised cover letter (written specifically to the client) then we have a standard 'about' section which is always the same and then a series of past projects that we again customise depending on the client. We produce about 5-10 of these every month.

I'm wondering what the best way is to set up our files to try to automate this process a little more. I have noted the options I can think of below but all have their negatives - does someone have a better solution?

Option 1 - Book Feature

I create seperate InDesign files for each of the sections (Cover, Cover Letter, About, Projects) and then use the book feature to combine them all. The problem with this is that we have over 500 projects and each has 2-3 variations (different images, content etc.) so that would mean we have a library with over 1500 seperate indesign files in it as from what I see you can't select specific pages from one InDesign document when using the Book feature. The other problem with this is that the Cover and Cover Letter are customised, so i'd need to make these files in InDesign first, save them somewhere and then add them to the book feature.

Option 2 - Place InDesign files within InDesign

This would mean we can have a master template where we can customise the cover and cover letter, then place the relevant InDesign pages into the document. It means we can keep all 1500 project pages in one master InDesign file and then just select the relevant pages from it. My fear with this however is placing 10-20 indesign documents into one file will make the file size very large and there could be issues with missing links. I'm avoiding placing PDF files here as this means we would have to export a PDF everytime we make a change to a project page which may not happen and therefore an old version of the page might be used with outdated content on it.

Option 3 - Copy Paste

This is how we are currently doing it .. basically just opening a 'master file' with all the static content in it and some blank pages for the projects, and then copy/pasting the pages we want into a new InDesign document and making any customisations from here and then exporting it to PDF. The problem with this is it's time consuming doing the copy/paste and there is room for error if things aren't copied across correctly.

Would love to know if anyone has found a good solution for this.

Report · Apr 18, 2022

I would go with Opt 1. The book feature was built for cases like yours.

Both 1 and 2 allow multiple users to make updates to pieces of the core document at the same time.

My only concern with Opt 2 is similar to yours - if you have graphics in your InDesign documents links could get messy.

You wouldn't select specific pages in a book or linked doc, you would select the linked ID document, open then edit the individual page, save and update the Parent/Master ID document.

Either way, having 1500 individual ID documents is not a bad thing. It's better than Opt 3 - keeping all your eggs in one basket. If that file were to ever corrupt all that work would be lost.

Report · Apr 18, 2022

Thanks Kevin,

I was thinking this was the most logical approach as it means we have much better control over version control etc.

My only concern is how we manage the custom pages. E.g. how would you recommend we manage the customised cover and cover letter - would we have a folder on our server that has x2 indesign template documents in it, one for the custom cover and another for the cover letter in it and we make our changes and then save these files out? I guess that means for every capability document we create, we end up with 3 files - the cover indesign file, cover letter file and then the actual exported PDF. I know we could save over the cover and cover letter each time we create a document, but sometimes we need to revert back to these at a later date to make a change, so we can't have a single instance of this file we just keep updating.

Thanks,

Chris

Report · Apr 19, 2022

I would keep separate files for each cover. That way you can always reuse and not overwrite.

Report · Apr 19, 2022

I would use all your options. You will want to keep everything meticulously organized, to avoid missing links and content errors, so make a separate folder for each client, in these folders keep a cover, and letter file and a copy of your base file* consisting of the About us & Past projects pages (generic version). Make a folder for the generic About us & Past projects template files, keeping this up to date, (which will automatically update the client files when opened). Since the Past projects pages will change, keep the project documents separate (in the generic folder) as much as possible and place them into a base InDesign file* (which you will copy into each client folder).

In order to customize the project pages, you can either include or exclude pages when creating the client versions, or use InDesign layers (object layer options).

Tip: use the Content collector tool to copy/paste as a link.

You can either make a new client InDesign file (or book file) and place the cover, about, and project pages into it and export to a pdf, or export them separately and combine them in Acrobat.

Tip 2: If you want to remember any special handling of a page, write yourself a big note and put it on a non-printing layer (the note will never export to pdf and would be seen only when Overprint preview was off).

Report · Apr 19, 2022

Thanks Luke,

We might give this approach a trial run and see how it goes as well.

Report · Apr 19, 2022

Thanks Kevin