Chapter 11

InDesign is an incredible application and part of an ever-growing creative community. It is THE professional, industry tool and the benchmark for publishing. Yes, there are alternatives available, but they’re all striving to be as good as InDesign has been for 20 years. And there are creatives out there making additional tools for InDesign, such as scripts and plug-ins (many free and some you’ll need to pay for), that enable us to perform functions quicker and easier, which gives us more precious time to create and earn a living. In this chapter we’ll talk about where to find these scripts and plug-ins and how to install them. We’ll go hunting for some fun Easter eggs in InDesign, some of which are incredibly useful! We’ll look at some professional additions to InDesign, such as the powerful Extensis products made especially for the creative and publishing sector. These are tools that have been at the leading edge in the publishing market since 1993. We’ll take a quick look at Grid Calculator Pro, a great tool for setting up professional grid systems for your files, and we’ll check out Fontself (one of my personal favorites), which is a brilliant tool for making your own typefaces and fonts to use in your InDesign documents. I’ll also show you how to make QR codes right in InDesign. Then we’ll look at where else you can find resources for both InDesign and general design needs. There are some excellent training resources out there, including my own InDesign classes on KelbyOne.com, and more content over at InDesign Secrets, a site run by David Blatner and Anne Marie Concepcion. There are lots of creative people out there creating and sharing content to make the world of InDesign and publishing a better place. I hope you’ve found that this book has become a part of that!

InDesign Fun Fact #12

Before changing to simple version numbers, some of InDesign’s codenames have included Shuksan, K2, Sherpa, Annapunna, DragonTail, FireDrake, Cobalt, Basil, Rocket, Athos, Citius, and Sirius.