Helpful Tips from the Denver InDesign Conference

Erica Gamet

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The InDesign Conference in Denver just wrapped up this week. All of the attendees I talked to said they had learned so many great things and that their minds were chock full of new and useful information. Some were thrilled to have learned a whole new skill or way of working, while others had picked up a collection of little production tips. The recurring theme I heard was that they were leaving the event ready to improve their workflow and their designs. With that in mind, I asked several attendees to share their favorite little “new-to-them” tidbit, and have listed a few of them here.

Ungroup Remembers Layers
When you group items in InDesign, the items all move to a common layer. In one of the latest updates, a new item—”Ungroup Remembers Layers”—was added. With this item selected, items move back to their original layer when they are ungrouped.

Component Info
You can access scads of information about an InDesign file if you know where to look. On a Mac, choose About InDesign from the InDesign menu while holding down the Command key. On a PC, you’ll use the Ctrl key and choose About InDesign from the Help menu. The resulting dialog box has application information, as well as document-specific information such as plug-ins used, revision history, and whether or not the file was converted, saved, and/or exported.

Hyphenation in Left-Justified Text
Hyphenation isn’t just important for fully-justified text columns. Your ragged right paragraphs will also benefit from hyphenation control. With the hyphenation turned off, you’ll end up with a very disparate amount of white space at the end of each line, giving the paragraph an overly ragged right edge.

Using GIFs in an EPUB
Using a GIF as a video element in your EPUB file gives you options you wouldn’t normally have. For one thing, you can have a transparent background. If you’re using a GIF to autoplay, you can set the file to play a certain number of times before stopping, as opposed to playing only once or looping. GIFs also don’t display an onscreen controller, which can create a more streamlined user experience.

Controlling Drop Caps
By default, when using a drop cap in a paragraph, the drop cap letter aligns with the left edge of the text frame. If you’d rather not have the letter fit so rigidly, deselect “Align Left Edge” in the Drop Caps and Nested Styles dialog box accessed from the Paragraph panel menu.


Were you at the InDesign Conference? If so, do you have a favorite tip you learned? Let us know in the comments.