Techincal stuff to impress my teachers

[andreasw16676623]

Hi

I'm going to my final graphic design exam after 4 years of school and to get the highest grade, you must do things beyond what we should be able to do at our level. What is are some techniques that will impess my teachers? 🙂

My project is a Magazine 🙂 

Things they expect:
Baseline grid
Guide Lines
PSD Links
Paragraph and Character styles
Reflowable ePub
Wraps
TOC

[Peter Spier]

Sidebars? Dummy ads?

[Eugene Tyson]

What will impress them most is doing the tasks as outlined and above expectations. Get the basics right. The rest comes with experience.

And curious... Why psd links?

[andreasw16676623]

PSD Links because they want to see we can work efficiently.
That we know the changes we make in photoshop are directly updated in indesign

[Eugene Tyson]

But any link will require the same attention.

If you're using vector masks, vector paths, text layers, these are rasterised on export from InDesign to the resolution of the Photoshop file.

For this type of content in Photoshop it's much better to save as a Photoshop pdf with editing capabilities ticked.

Saving every file as psd is erroneous as it depends on the file content.

Similarly if you receive a jpg and it doesn't need any editing, place it in InDesign. No need to save it as a psd, it gains you nothing.

You really need to work with the file format that best suits the content.

[andreasw16676623]

Wont be using PSD links for every picture in the magazine, only the cover 🙂 

[Peter Spier]

ANYTHING that isn't created directly in the file you are working on should be linked (well, you don't have to maintain the link with placed text, but that presumes the editors did their job before sending it to you for layout).

Another advanced feature that would be used in a magazine that isn't mentioned above is jump lines (continued on/from) which can be automated using the Next Page and Previous Page Marker special characters. Jump lines go in their own text frames that touch the story they refer to. They get used when a story continues with un-related intervening pages.

[Eugene Tyson]

What's that got to do with it???

[Peter Spier]

Which part? Links? Why in a magazine would you link only the cover imagery? All imported objects other than text should be linked, not pasted or embedded.

Not linking text?  Shouldn't really need to maintain a link to text ready for publication, and questionable if you want to at all if editing is to be done in InDesign.

Jump lines? Just another feature to use.

Or were you asking the OP?

[Eugene Tyson]

My apologies, Peter, I was asking op. Sorry for mixup.

[Peter Spier]

No worries.

[Creamer Training]

>>>What is are some techniques that will impess (sic) my teachers?

Have you looked the items up in the help file?

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/user-guide.html

[Barb Binder]

Hi @andreasw16676623:

I would add nested styles and GREP styles to your list. And linked parent pages.

~Barb

[Lukas Engqvist]

For your EPUB add Alt texts and tag the file for accessibility… it will not only impress your teachers but give you skills needed for future 🙂 You are anchoring your images in your text flow?

[Spenno]

Some great ideas here. As mentioned don't forget to go beyond the basics with your styles - how about:

• nested styles (great within a well-defined TOC)
• automatic page/column breaks (simple, but as a tutor I wouldn't want to see paragraph returns used to create white space or move text around!)
• definitely a simple GREP or two (basic ones might be controlling runts, or detecting specific words/phrases and placing them in their own style)
• automatic captions for a grid of images
• paragraph shading/rules
• demonstrate that you've used even the default 'find and replace' options within InDesign - for example, to remove double-spaces, white space etc
• maybe a simple script that would do something to increase workflow

Hope any of those give you some ideas. 🙂

[Document Geek]

• Conditional Text
• Anchored Objects
• Conditional Anchored Objects
• Bulleted/Numbered List
• Multi-level bulleted/ numbered lists
• Span/Split Columns
• Mutli column text frames
• Jump lines
• Stroke styles
• Object styles
• Live captions