Perth InDesign User GroupMeeting Summary
Topics were fantastic! Really enjoyed the enthusiasm of both presenters.
Wed, Feb 11th, 2009 at 5:45 PM
Edith Cowan University - Mt.Lawley
Event Details
February 11 marked Perth's third InDesign User Group meeting. As with the previous two meetings, many members attended both pre-meeting drinks and the seminar sessions.
As always, it was fantastic to see so much interaction between the members.
The evening was hosted by Chapter Representative Cari Jansen, who also delivered a series of tips and tricks about "Creating Interactive PDFs from InDesign" and François Gintzburger, who provided a lively practical session about "Data Merge".
The Interactive PDF session provided a great introduction to building Interactive PDFs using InDesign. We learnt how to create a cool image roll-over effect using a combination of button states and blending modes, how to show and hide content using a combination of button states and actions, insert a movie into a PDF, and create our own play buttons and create hyperlinks. In addition, we saw how creating a Table of Contents can help us automatically add bookmarks to PDFs as well as generate an interactive Table of Contents page that has links for all content listed to the relevant pages in the PDF.
Many of the tips Cari provided have since been written up and are on her website www.carijansen.com (see end of summary for direct links to the tutorials).
Following a short intermission, InDesign User Group member and guest-speaker for this evening François Gintzburger, provided members with an entertaining overview of InDesign's Data Merge tools, using real-life sample data: Wedding invites and Place Cards. We learnt about using Comma Separated Value files, inserting field data into an InDesign document, and ultimately creating fully personalised invites and placeholder cards. Links to the notes and files used by François are available at the bottom of this page.
At the end of the meeting, once again we were able to give away some great prizes to many lucky winners. Thank YouThis meeting would not have been possible without generous ongoing support by Adobe Systems, Aquent (food & drinks) and Edith Cowan University(venue) and the help provided by volunteer members Lynne (registration) and Francois (member guest speaker). Thank You!
The prizes we got to give away were kindly provided by Adobe Systems (Adobe InDesign software), Markzware (Q2ID Software) and Stock Layouts (Stock Layout Membership). Thank You! Comments from the evaluation sheets"... Found practical work examples very useful. Already using last user group examples."
"Fantastic stuff, new tricks, dynamic presentation & nibblies!!"
"Great Learning, really enjoyed data merge."
"Very Informative."
"Excellent, excellent!!! Thx very much!
Next MeetingOur next meeting will be on Tuesday June 2nd, make a note in your diary now and keep an eye out for the official email announcement after Easter.
I look forward to seeing you all again early June, and wish you all a great Easter
Warm Regards,
Cari Jansen
Chapter Representative, Perth InDesign User Group
perth@indesignusergroup.com
Interactive PDF tutorials - now available online
A simple roll-over effect
Adding a movie
Adding movie controller buttons
Showing/Hiding Content
Hyperlink to selected document pages
A Story about Table of Contents and Bookmarks
Data Merge notes and sample files
Francois has kindly made his notes and sample files available here:
Data Merge Notes
Data Merge Sample Files (12.5Mb)
The DataMerge.pdf is also available directly on this page (below).
PDF File/s
Photos From This Meeting
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos | 
