How to quickly rebrand different InDesign documents

[madisonhance]

Hello!

I have been struggling to find a solution for a problem that is extremely repetetive, labor/time intensive, and never ending!

The problem:

A little Backstory:

A 60ish page InDesign document/program created for a company called Aqua (fake name). Aqua has their own brand, colors, their name listed multiple times, their personal logo, and images that are specific to their brand throughout the document.

Current Process:

So Aqua's program is constantly being updated, at least a couple times a week. We offer the same program Aqua has to multiple different companies, say 3-4 more. Fushchia, Indigo, and Charcoal. Everytime I make a change to Aqua, I also need to make the change to the three others (Fushchia, Indigo, and Charcoal). Which takes a lot of time to go page by page and make the same change across multiple documents, which allows a higher risk for mistakes.

Somtimes the changes made to Aqua are so indepth that I delete the current programs for Fushchia, Indigo, and Charcoal and start by duplicating Aqua and rebranding them individually, 1 by 1. I use comand-find to replace the company name – replacing the colors is fairly easy/doesn't take a lot of time, but replacing the images and rezing/making sure the newly placed logo looks good on all pages can be a different story.

Basically imagine two companies using the same programs. McDonalds and Burger King. When you go to present to them you want to cobrand (with your brand and theirs). This would require changing the logo, company name, colors, imagery, etc.

My first thought was to make one generic program, remove any details that are specific to the brand and just personalize the very first page but that idea was shot down.

Has anyone ever faced a similar challenege? This problem is making me go insane!

If you have any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it 🙂

Thank you!

[Peter Villevoye]

I think another good step to a more structural workflow would be to start using custom text as Text Variables. These are easy to define, use, and change. At least easier than multiple Find/Replace commands...

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/text-variables.html

For changing logos you could just try to benefit from changing the logo itself within a package folder (where InDesign expects the logo to be stored), without changing its name. The new logo(s) should be updated in the document(s). A similar result could be achieved by using the Relink button in the Links panel.

There are many more clever approaches available, but most of them require a fair deal of preparation and consistency among co-workers – thus some time and good communication. So it's often just more pragmatic to get a big mug of tea or coffee, put on Spotify, and go ahead with doing it manually, once again...