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Looking for a friendly, local InDesigner

17 Comments

Hello, fair reader.

You probably don’t live in Utah, and you probably don’t use Adobe InDesign.

Probably.

But it’s possible that you do, and it’s possible also that you know somebody who does.

Here’s the deal. Our book layout-guy, Steve Troop, is working on a new, top-secret project, and won’t be able to help us with the next 240-page Schlock book (at least not before mid-2008). This last one just about killed him. So we’ve decided to take it in-house, and since my arms are already full-to-bursting with creating bonus content for said book, we’ve further decided that Sandra will be doing the layout.

She doesn’t know how, and I’m told the learning curve can be quite steep.

Ideally, some kind, local expert would come to our home, break bread with us, and walk Sandra through the basics. We have the bread. We’ll shortly have the templates that point out which basics are germane. We have Adobe InDesign CS2. What we lack is a kind, local expert.

17 thoughts on “Looking for a friendly, local InDesigner”

  2. InDesign? Why not good ol’ PageMaker? That’s an easier program for laying the book out — the only problem is, 240 pages of Schlock… ouch. I robo-layout my 300+ strips per book, initialy to Postscript and now to RTF.

    1. Three reasons:

      1) The other books were laid out in InDesign
      2) Our printer is very familiar with the format, and can be trusted with the source files
      3) We own licensed copies for both Sandra’s computer and for my own (CS2 on her machine, CS3 on mine)

      The Schlock book layouts are quite complex. I’m not sure what “good ol’ Pagemaker” has going for it, but I’m not adding “porting the book design template to a new format” to the list of tasks that need to be performed.

  3. If that doesn’t work out, there are two books I recommend for learning InDesign.

    http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-InDesign-CS2-Classroom-Book/dp/0321321855

    This will not be a complete tutorial, but will give her some basics and will do lots of hand-holding. If she’s a visually creative person this should get her excited about what the program can do, even if it’s very light on details. Useless as a reference. Excellent to get started.

    http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Adobe-InDesign-CS2/dp/0321322029

    This one will really teach the program, and will then serve as a reference. It will do no hand-holding, and would probably be too non-hand-holdy without first the introduction of the previous volume. But it will be thorough.

    It will take a couple weeks of dedicated effort to go through both.

    A more thorough tutorial book than the Classroom in a Book, and of the same quality, would be wonderful, but I don’t know of one.

  4. I’m not at all local, but I’m a designer who uses InDesign every day. I also teach it to college students. If you have any questions or want any help, let me know. I highly recommend the “Sam’s Teach Yourself” series of books, specifically the Adobe Creative Suite CS2 book. It is my first teaching reference and even though I have known the programs for years, the book taught me a few things. There’s also the Lynda.com site and book series, but I don’t know if that covers InDesign.

    1. Should you be considering a short vacation soon, I would point out that the area is 100% beautiful. Stunningly, breathtakingly so.

      And you’d get to eat a meal with Howard and Sandra.

      Hey, that last part sounds like an auction item… 🙂

  5. Why did you have to go and do that Howard. Peyton does a lot of work with Indesign CS2 and up until about three months ago we were right there in provo. Now we are in Atlanta, grad school is making my life miserable and we miss all of our friends. Sorry we couldn’t be of more help. I’m starting to hate moving more and more, grumble gruble.

    2. See, now you went and made Howard t3h sad.

      In [number of days in the buffer] days from now, Schlock is gonna make us cry. 🙂

      1. He’s already disintegrated the mad scientist’s less-easily-regenerated half, and we’re only halfway through the month.

        How did he say “medic” without lips or a tongue?

        1. How did he say “medic” without lips or a tongue?
          I try really hard not to question stuff like that.

          Otherwise, I start screaming at my TV over every little thing…

          1. Howard sets himself up for it by keeping to higher good-science standards than the likes of TV sci-fi, though. I don’t think we’ve once seen a tachyon field switch polarity.

            Mercifully.

    2. I hadn’t forgotten Kristy. I’d just never mentioned it to Howard. He saw my post yesterday and started searching for help not knowing I already had a connection for it.

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