Minneapolis InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

The Twin Cities InDesign® user group met for the third time, on a snowy, traffic-crawling evening.

This time, our group met at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Finding a place large enough to meet is a challenge. With underwriting help from The Foundation, we were able to pay for the auditorium space for the night.

We had a good turnout considering how snowfall during the day made for long waits in slow traffic. The topic of the evening: “Show & tell us your best tips & techniques.”

We had some seasoned InDesign® users volunteer their time to share with us.

First up, from Adobe, was Tom Petrillo. We also had Pete Rivard, from Dunwoody College of Technology, and our local Adobe trainer, Keith Gilbert, from Gilbert Consulting, as well as Bob Achhamer, from Marshall Fields, present for the group.

We all followed along while we learned great InDesign techniques, such as:

Using guides smarter
Setting default fonts
Changing tool behavior
Copying drop-shadows
Stylish paragraph rules
A snappy new way to edit info in dialog boxes
Photoshop file browser’s drag-and-drop methods
Using the book feature to sync styles throughout documents
Importing interactive information such as hyperlinks
Finding component information
Three neat transparency tips for layout mockups

We followed up with a few group questions, and together we walked through some solutions.

After our Q&A session, we drew names for prizes. It was announced that all the prizes this time would be cross-platform for the evening, so we laughed when books were held high. Very fitting to our theme for the evening: Someone walked away with a copy of InDesign® CS Killer Tips.

Ed Klemz, from Central Coast Consulting, brought some three-button optical mice and a “wild” lunchbox for us to give away.

It was a fun and informative night for all who attended.

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