United States of AmericaThis really has given me some incentive to experiment with styles.
Attendee
Schoolcraft College
Event DetailsWe were back at Schoolcraft College on October 22 for some stylin’ in the “D” and a surprise celebration (more on that later). Since implementing an earlier start time that began at our September meeting, many arrived to take advantage of the extra time for networking and use of the Answer Desk. Pizza was enjoyed by the 151 attendees, and early arrivals scooped up notepads donated by Web Litho, Inc. (http://www.weblitho.com).
The Answer Desk is becoming more popular, with members bringing in all types of problems they needed help with. Many thanks go to Robert Robbins of West Metro Printing, Tom Bellaver from Web Litho, Inc., and Celia McCulloch for volunteering.
The main event of style strategies and text timesavers was presented by the man who, literally, wrote the book on styles -- Michael Murphy, author of “Adobe InDesign CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts” and host of the popular video podcast, “The InDesigner.” Michael took some time out of his busy schedule to join us through a Connect session.
He was able to reinforce through demonstrations that when it comes to efficiency and flexibility, there’s no beating InDesign’s powerful styles. But when faced with character styles, paragraph styles, nested styles, GREP styles, nested line styles, object styles, table styles, and cell styles as options, it’s time for some strategic thinking. Planning ahead, and having a “style strategy” at the start of any project pays off throughout the life of that project in time saved, headaches avoided, and changes taken in stride.
Michael walked us through the many different types of styles in InDesign, and revealed countless tips and tricks for maximizing their potential. He helped us see why it’s more important to determine what the text in your document is than to decide how it looks, when defining as little as possible about a style is much more useful than defining everything, and how to build “smart paragraphs” that format text dynamically using CS4’s new GREP Styles.
Visit Michael’s website www.theindesigner.com for lots of tips and insights on our favorite software. And members can purchase his book at a discount with the 35% Peachpit discount through the Member Benefit page on the IDUG website.
Adobe’s Noha Edell was on hand to help us celebrate InDesign’s 10th anniversary with some delicious cake, donated by Adobe, happily consumed during our break. She also announced that Michael’s presentation was being recorded and can now be accessed through the following links:
In keeping with past meetings, we were fortunate to procure lots of prizes for our raffle: Shutterstock swag; books, including four coveted copies of Michael’s book; a subscription to StockLayouts template library and two Design Boxes; a CopyFit Desktop plug-in; FoldRite’s “The Professional’s Guide to Folding”; a Layers Magazine subscription; subscriptions to InDesign Magazine; two copies of Gridiron’s Flow software; and one copy of InDesign CS4. Many went home very happy indeed!
Thanks to the following sponsors:
* O'Reilly
* KW Media for a Layers magazine subscription
* FoldRite
* Schoolcraft College for the meeting space and food, especially the Computer Graphics Technology department for event support.
Wow! Another language to learn! I sure get the importance of these styles. Very interesting application of somewhat complicated, but dynamic, concepts. Great job Michael!
I NEED the book!
Michael Murphy is awesome. It was great to hear him talk right to us after listening to him for hours on his podcast. I wish he could have been here so, like the geek that I am, I could tell all my designer friends that I actually met the InDesigner.
This really has given me some incentive to experiment with styles.
Great presentation. Michael really knows how to explain clearly and with entertainment value :) Oh, and thank you for the cake!
Most of the styles demonstrated could have saved me so much time and frustration on projects. I know it will save time in the future.
Wonderful! Only thing that would have improved the evening is if Michael could have been in the room.
Good use of technology to have remote guest presentation of good topic.
Adobe Connect was surprisingly effective.
Interesting to use Adobe Connect. Worked well. Next best thing to being there.
The next Detroit IDUG meeting will be Wednesday, January 13 at Schoolcraft College in Livonia. Daniel Dejan, North American ETC (Education, Training, Consulting) Print & Creative Manager for Sappi Fine Paper, will present “Varnishes and Coatings” and “Life with Print.”
Donna Gniewek
Detroit IDUG Chapter Rep
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