Seeking Suggestions for Redesigning a Complex Document

Well, you're sort of asking for broad tutorials and master-class tips, here... which is perfectly okay, we're here to answer questions and share our experience. But it could take a lot of very disconnected discussion to even try to brush across the basics.

It's one thing to master an app's features and functions, and another to apply them with skill and judgment, especially when the result depends on design skill and esthetics (often within a narrow range of what's acceptable for that medium/category of material).

This forum and pretty much all tutorials and references we're likely to point to can cover the technical aspects, down to some nearly secret tricks of how to get certain results. But I am not sure it's at all a good venue to learn design and page layout and presentation from that esthetic viewpoint. And that said, I am not sure I know of any resources for the latter, short of having innate talent, being mentored/trained in it or perhaps a full course in graphic/publication design from accomplished teachers.

(I often say "The tool is not the task" — to students, colleagues, clients and would-be employers. It's all too easy to mistake mastery of an app, a tool, for mastery of its craft focus. My well-worn example of why this is nonsense is this: How many people are absolute masters of Word's extensive features and capabilities? Millions, surely. Now... how many are bestselling authors? Some very small subset, surely.)

For writing and art, there are groups and critique sources that can help you refine your artistic/esthetic skills. I am not aware of any such for publication-focused design. The best approach is to study equivalent publications, as many as possible across a wide range of creation eras, and adapt what you like to your own work. And then get at least one or two reasonably developed opinions on the results.

But for the technical aspects, and how to get that effect you see in this or that source example... we've got all day, here. 🙂