Twin Cities InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

Twin Cities InDesign User Group meeting
Wed, Jan 13th, 2010 at 7:00 PM
Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD)
Event Details

133 InDesign users turned out for our January meeting to help celebrate the 10th birthday of Adobe InDesign. Those who came a few minutes early were treated to Birthday cake provided by Adobe Systems. Leslie Dimond decorated the cake, complete with a text frame, a nice serif typeface (properly kerned), hidden characters displayed and an overset text indicator! (Yes, it was photographed -- see below.)

The first presentation of the evening was by James Fritz from C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions in Milwaukee. James gave a content-packed, fast-paced tutorial on tricks for working with long documents. In just over an hour, he covered how and why to use the Book panel, how to create and update an automatic Table of Contents, tons of Style formatting tips, how to work with section markers, how and why to use Object Styles, and neat trick for automatically inserting Anchored Frames in text, and much more. It was a fantastic presentation that covered a lot of territory, and everyone learned something they could take home to make their work more efficient.

The second presentation was by Keith Gilbert of Gilbert Consulting. He explain how the little-understood "Balance Ragged Lines" feature works, and when you would want to use it for long documents. He explained how it works with Paragraph Styles, and then explained how to use a free script that he's written that provides additional options for working with the Balance Ragged Lines command.

The evening concluded lots of great giveaways: books, software, iTunes gift cards, and more provided by Central Coast Solutions, Peachpit Press and Adobe Systems.

Thank you

Once again, the facility fee for the evening was generously underwritten by MCAD and Central Coast Solutions. Their support is why the Twin Cities InDesign User Group meetings continue to be completely free for registered members.

Comments from attendees

My head is spinning from all the tips from Fritz. Great!!

Amazing! A ton of info.

Fritz is a very good presenter and was full of good information. Keith knows how to explain complex topics in an easy-to-understand way.

This was one of the best ones yet! Thanks!

Tonight was pretty cool. It was great to learn some new tricks. Wow...Styles...What hell have I been living through...I need to convert.

Fritz is an energetic and entertaining speaker. The long document topic is helpful. Loved Keith's exposure of an obscure command. I'm to busy to explore all those. Now I can use it.

Thank you for providing this opportunity! Excellent presenters and good info. It's great to have this resource close to home.

That was great info. I am not dreading my next catalog as much.

Great workshops. Can't wait to use the tricks! Thanks.

James Fritz was wonderful! Very entertaining and super informative and squeezed in hints and shortcuts and was amazing with his automation! Makes long documents sound more than manageable and I couldn't believe the efficiency that's out there! Can save a ton of time and money!

I am so glad I made attending the priority I did...EXCELLENT tips!

Very valuable!...Yummy Cake!...Awesome!...A+

A huge amount of info in a short time.

I learned more about style sheets in an hour than I did in 2 years with Quark.

Fritz rocks! I learned so much! I couldn't write things down fast enough!

Information packed and practical. I am recommending this to my peers. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thank you for your willingness to put these sessions on. I grew today! Yeah!

Many excellent tips! (Can't believe all the time I've wasted doing things the hard way!)

Photos From This Meeting
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos