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• • July 7, 2010 at 5:14 am #56283
    Annamarie

    Participant

    I'm a somewhat new InDesign user so the answer to my question may be obvious but I thought I'd ask and maybe save myself some time and frustration.

    Working on a document that will be plus 100 pages with appendices. My colleague has done the editing in Word and also made all the design decisions (I know, I know that InDesign offers more than Word – but this is the way the project is structured.) The doc has four main parts. All the elements are the same for each part except for the colors. There are large blocks of color for the header and the footer in each part and then three heading styles in colors to match/coordnate with each of the headers and footers. Also text boxes, captions and tables.

    So I'm thinking that the best way to organize this is to have one master page spread – without colors? Or I could have four with the colors? WHat happens when I take each part and put it into a book? (I'll need a TOC and Appendices.) I could make the headers and footers snippets or library and apply them to each page? The text boxes will be in a library. I don't think Master pages are intended to handle changes in color?

    And then I'll make lots of paragraph styles with names like Heading 1-blue, Heading 1 green and put them each in a folder.? That part seems right to me.

    And yes, I'm taking the Word webinar today.

    Thanks.

  • July 7, 2010 at 12:41 pm #56290
    Billy Chase

    Member

    I'm sure some others can add to what I'll mention to do.

    I would make some Paragraph Styles that you can base the rest of your styles on. If you happen to be using Times or Minion Pro then you setup your basic style for a Header, Body, Caption, etc. Then you would take your Paragraph Styles that have different colors and base them on these root styles. That way if they decide to change the font to something else you only have to change the style that the other styles are based. It beats having to go through the rest of them and change each one. Dividing them into folders is a good idea for organization.

    You will also want to designate styles that will work with your TOC. TOCs are style based and they rely heavily on consistent use of a style for chapter markers, sections, or whatever method is used to divide the long document up.

    I haven't had any experience making an Appendices for a book. My daily work doesn't usually need that sort of thing. I'm sure someone can chime in on the best way to handle that.

    I would also try to style match from your Word Doc to your InDesign as much as you can. This should save some time.

    Best of luck with everything.

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