Making Charts and Graphs in InDesign
It’s hard to believe that Adobe hasn’t built a modern, full-featured, designer-Âfriendly graphing solution that integrates seamlessly into an InDesign page layout workflow. Adobe’s solution is the nine anemic graph tools built into Illustrator—tools that contain only very basic features, haven’t been significantly improved since they made their debut in Illustrator during the early 1990s.
Different workflows require different tools. Do you just need to create an occasional highly designed chart, or do you need to include hundreds of repetitive data-driven graphics in a lengthy report? Will the charts be used for both print and digital output? Can you get by with standard pie, bar, and line charts, or do you need more esoteric chart styles?
In this article, I’ll show you how to create charts that integrate into InDesign layouts and the strengths and weaknesses of each method. I’ll cover plug-ins and scripts, some special data visualization fonts, some miscellaneous solutions that you might already own, and how to find out more about these tools.
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