The Main Uses of InDesign

Adobe InDesign helps transform the written word into published work.

Since desktop publishing's early days, graphic designers have relied on page-layout software to turn creative vision into creative output. Aldus PageMaker led the way in the 1980s. Its competitor QuarkXPress entered the market in 1987 and dominated it for a decade. In 1999, Adobe Systems launched Adobe InDesign, crafted to combine a fresh approach to design tasks with tools familiar to users of Adobe's other software. Today, InDesign meets varied output targets for a wide range of audiences.

Print Layouts

Like all page-layout software, Adobe InDesign excels at supporting the design and production of printed materials. From postcards and brochures to books and posters, InDesign includes the typesetting, graphic- and document-creation tools to craft designs at every level of complexity. Within the Adobe Creative Suite, InDesign interfaces smoothly with its sister applications, including Photoshop and Illustrator, to incorporate bitmapped and vector graphics into your documents.

Digital Document Creation

When your output target moves from the printed page to the computer monitor, Adobe InDesign switches gears to provide tools for creating Adobe Acrobat files and e-books. You can repurpose your print layouts to accommodate many of these alternate output formats. InDesign's fluent path to PDF output simplifies your publishing tasks, meeting the demand for Acrobat files as a destination format alongside or instead of print. As publishing continues to move into new markets and media, e-book formats form a central part of InDesign's new feature set in recent versions of the software.

Website Design

To make Web-based designs harmonize with materials created to appear in other media, including print and digital distribution, Adobe InDesign paves your way to multi-channel reuse of layout ideas and files. InDesign exports HTML and CSS from layout documents, translating document styles into Web-ready output. It exports images to the proper formats and resolution for online use, converts lists and bullets, and exports sets of files suitable to upload to a website or import into Adobe Dreamweaver.

Interactive Design

InDesign includes the tools you need to turn your designs for other media into Flash- and PDF-based interactive materials. You can craft static layouts for print or onscreen use, then venture beyond them to draw the reader into multimedia experiences that carry forward the look and feel of your existing work. Add animations and page transitions to your layouts and target them to SWF export. Preview your animations without leaving Adobe InDesign, then distribute files suitable for use on tablet computers, in Web browsers or on mobile devices.

References

• Quark: About Quark: Company Profile
• Adobe Systems; Adobe InDesign Celebrates a Decade of Publishing
• Adobe Systems: Using Adobe InDesign CS5 & CS5.5
• "Real World InDesign CS5"; Olav Martin Kvern, et al.; 2010
• "InDesign CS5 Bible"; Galen Gruman; 2010