December 4, 2007
The meeting opened with the discussion of “group business” that included reminders about using our own web site, www.idugdenver.net, to get up-to-date information on the group and to participate in our forums. We are encouraging more of our group members to come to and participate in meetings and to bring a friend!
First Presentation
InDesign User Group Chapter Rep Symposium - Update from Seattle
Presenter: Brian Reyman
Brian is co-chair of the Denver InDesign User Group as well as a Director at Aimco, a large Real Estate Investment Trust. At Aimco, Brian oversees graphic design, content development, and tools for their training team.
Chapter Reps Erica and Brian recently returned from Seattle where they attended the InDesign User Group Chapter Rep Symposium. There, they had the opportunity to meet with the Adobe InDesign engineers to ask questions about the product and also to meet other Chapter Reps from around the county to discuss meeting strategies and to find out what other chapters are doing.
There are 32 InDesign User group chapters in the U.S. and abroad and over 25,000 members. Here in Denver there are about 200 registered members who get the e-mails, but the chapter has about 15-25 members that attend regularly. Our focus this year will be to increase attendance to the meetings, get more people involved in volunteering within the group, and to bring in a larger variety of presenters. To make this group successful and to continue growing, we need to start bringing about more of a feeling of community and to make the meetings more interactive and useful to the members. There were many different ideas discussed to get more member involvement:
Have an “Ask an Expert” setup before each meeting where members can bring in a file or an issue that they might be having with a project and work it out with one of the experts.
Have people bring in samples of some of their work to show others to facilitate idea sharing.
If a member has found a great production shortcut or workaround that could be beneficial to others, have them do a short presentation. Some upcoming topics in the upcoming year will include InDesign xHTML export to other applications, student and professional project presentations, InCopy, graphic design best practices, and interactive PDFs. If anyone has a topic that they would like to see, would like to be a presenter, or know someone who would be a great presenter, please e-mail admin@idugdenver.net. We want this to be your group and input is both welcomed and encouraged.
Second Presentation
Tables in InDesign: Thinking Outside the Box
Presenter: Erica Gamet
Co-owner of Digital Dimensions in Westminster, Colorado, Erica is an InDesign trainer with almost 20 years of experience in the prepress trenches. She has contributed to InDesign Magazine and Design Tools Monthly and is the author of The InDesigner’s Workbook series. Erica presents her InDesign and pre-press courses to advertising agencies and designers nationwide.
What’s so great about tables in InDesign...EVERYTHING! Tables can provide flexibility to your design. A table can even become a design element if you want, thanks to the table styling in InDesign CS3.
Erica showed the group some great uses for tables in InDesign, that many people might not normally think of. She explained how to use tables for making forms of all kinds. Tables can also be used for paragraphic information and be used for design elements and simple tasks like grids.
Any time elements need to be lined up precisely or share common elements (such as keylines), a table is a good option. Erica also showed how using tables makes quick work of lining up and arranging multiple photos. By placing photos inside the table cells, the frames could be resized and moved quickly together, instead of having to change multiple picture frames.
Anytime you want to align an object, share key lines, create forms, grids, etc., think about using tables. The time that it will save will be worth its weight in gold!
