I wish everyone knew the Adobe Suite

"Slant6" (slant-6) 07/12/2017 at 09:22 • Filed to: None

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So I have to update some building information sheets to look more contemporary. Now I can make this look pretty, no problem, I just use Indesign for this kind of stuff. The thing is building supervisors will be filling in the information on their own. I was thinking I could just send out a spreadsheet to be filled out and data merge them all in, but I’ll have moved onto my school year job by the time all the info is together. It’s also unlikely that my successor will know how to use the Adobe Suite.

Any ideas on how to make a good layout that can be edited by people that don’t know how to use Indesign/ wont bother downloading it from the school software hub? I really don’t want to use publisher, but it looks like I might have to.

This is the old one, made in publisher that I’m updating. You can see why it needs to be updated.

Out, but with a W - has found the answer > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:29

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You might be able to create a fillable PDF in InDesign?

Nibby > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:29

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use comic sans

word art

bright, vibrant colors like yellow, pink, red

something like this works nicely

Slant6 > Out, but with a W - has found the answer 07/12/2017 at 09:30

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Oh man I forgot those existed. I wonder if paragraph and character styles stay? I’ll have to look into that, thanks!

Slant6 > Nibby 07/12/2017 at 09:31

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Of course it’s from New Jersey.

Ash78, voting early and often > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:33

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I was going to say that looks like every local hip-hop show flyer in Atlanta, but I guess they all use the same national design firm...

Out, but with a W - has found the answer > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:33

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No idea, I’ve only used InDesign a couple of times, and never for form-like things, so here’s where my (very) limited knowledge runs out. Good luck!

Slant6 > Ash78, voting early and often 07/12/2017 at 09:35

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We even have the same style up here in Boone, North Carolina. You know you’re in the Boonies when you’re in Boone.

Ash78, voting early and often > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:35

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I used to be decent with Photoshop and Illustrator, but in the case of what you ’ re showing above, I ’ d go Excel all the way. Protect most of the sheet and only allow clicks in certain cells. Using data validation to create drop - downs (or simply limit the type of data that can be entered in each cell) is really quick and easy. I don ’ t see anything in particular that looks like it might need to be tied to design software specifically. I always err toward “ universal ” software if I can. And Word sucks ass.

Slant6 > Ash78, voting early and often 07/12/2017 at 09:37

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Huh, that is an interesting idea. Always used Excel for spreadsheet, but I could see it working for this. Might take some playing with, but an interesting solution. Thanks.

Ash78, voting early and often > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:37

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My favorite are all the Tejano and Mariachi groups. The flyers are like a collage of 5 different bands, each with 10 members in full garb. It’s awesome. People don’t believe me when I tell them that Latino cultures are alive and thriving all over the rural South...

Tripper > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:38

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Myself (IT) and the marketing person at my office are the only ones who know the creator suite. We have analysts  that have to modify marketing materials...We’ve kicked around a million ideas like interfacing or just having them trained on InDesign. We eventually just re created those materials in power point! It’s terrible, but it works and the materials come out looking almost as good. Probably wont work with with any kind of merging though :/

Ash78, voting early and often > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:39

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Yep, you can do just about everything in Excel, but at the end of the day if you want to “control” the type of data entered, you probably have to use a data-based piece of software. 95% of people use Excel begrudgingly to do basic tasks, but it can do a LOT for designing forms. If you want anything to look fancy, though, you can always export a few of the elements from Adobe and just paste them into Excel.

Slant6 > Tripper 07/12/2017 at 09:42

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Well I could forego the merging if they could just fill it out themselves. The merge was just a way they could input the data not through Indesign. I have heard good things about contemporary powerpoint. Might have to give it a shot.

Tripper > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:45

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It works well for what we do. If they’re filling them out manually, it could work.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 09:49

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looks ok to me, but then i have no idea about most things when it comes to IT

Slant6 > Ash78, voting early and often 07/12/2017 at 09:56

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I was thinking about just doing that with publisher, making a nice background image and line the text boxes up just right. Problem is if they go out of the box the background image doesn’t line up right. Getting a lot of good ideas here, thanks.

Slant6 > pip bip - choose Corrour 07/12/2017 at 09:57

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I mean it gets the job done, but it could look a lot better. The design thing is the easy part (for me atleast).

TheRealBicycleBuck > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 10:17

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As was suggested in another response, a PDF form would give you everything you need. Completed forms can be e-mailed back and there are tools which pull the results into an Excel spreadsheet. These will remain viable long after you are gone and if someone needs to edit the original form, that can be done either with Adobe Acrobat or other third-party software.

Aremmes > Out, but with a W - has found the answer 07/12/2017 at 10:21

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This is likely the easiest method. If the form already exists in InDesign, it’s trivial to export/print it to PDF and then use Acrobat to add the fillable form fields where needed. That’ll keep the layout and font/paragraph styles frozen in place, and should be intuitive for novice users to figure out how to fill out.

Long Live the Longdoor > Slant6 07/12/2017 at 22:09

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I was going to suggest exactly this; I’m pretty sure the paragraph and character styles will stay, if not you can pop open Acrobat Pro and make them work. Either way, you have a PDF that is mostly “dumb” proof.