I’m often asked how to create an interactive PDF with InDesign with internal links so that you can, for example, click on a chapter title in the contents page and immediately get the PDF to jump to that page.

How to create an interactive PDF with internal links video

So I’ve made a video to show how to create hyperlink destinations within the InDesign document and then create buttons to go to them when clicked.

Interactive PDF example

To see an example of an interactive PDF then you can download my free e-book How to Market Yourself Online or, if you’re feeling rich, you can download the premium version How To Get Clients which is featured in the video.

Usual characteristics of interactive PDFs

PDFs that are normally exported from Word documents are usually linear, ugly and hard to read. They are usually upright pages of black Times New Roman text with a few hyperlinks.

In my opinion you can do so much more with PDFs. For starters you have the pages landscape so that they fill the screen. And you should use vector graphics, images, internal links, etc. You can also have forms, movies, layers, rollovers – just about any interactivity that we are used to on the web.

This makes the e-book fun, interactive, non-linear and the sort of publication that you can dip in and navigate around quickly so as to aid the reading and learning experience.

Creating internal links in the interactive PDF

In order to create an internal link within a PDF, you first have to create a Text Anchor in InDesign. With the Text Tool cursor either blinking or having highlighted some text you can create a Text Anchor by either right-clicking and selecting Interactive > New Hyperlink Destination… or by selecting New Hyperlink Destination in the Hyperlinks palette.

The page with this hyperlink destination on it can now be linked to from some text or a button on another page.

If you want to link to the Hyperlink Destination (page) by clicking a button: convert an object to a button by right-clicking and choosing Interactive > Convert to Button.

And then when you have created a button select Go To Desination as the Action of that button in the Buttons palette.

And then you can set the destination of that button as the Text Anchor or Hyperlink Destination you set earlier so that when that button is clicked the PDF will go to the relevant page.

If you want to link to the Hyperlink Destination (page) by clicking a text link: simply highlight the text that you want to be the internal link, and either click the Create new hyperlink button on the Hyperlink palette or, with the text highlighted, right-click and choose Interactive > New Hyperlink… and then in the resulting New Hyperlink dialogue box you can choose the Hyperlink Destination, a Character Style (something colorful and underlined like a link), the Appearance Type (choose Invisible Rectangle) and a Highlight (I usually don’t have one).

And now in the resulting PDF the word, when clicked, will take you to the relevant page of the Hyperlink Destination.

Creating external links in the interactive PDF

Creating hyperlinks in the InDesign document to go to web addresses when clicked is altogether more simple. All you do is select the word which is going to be the hyperlink and click the Create new hyperlink button in the Hyperlinks palette and choose URL in the New Hyperlink dialogue box and type the web address you want to link to.

I usually create a different colored but underlined Character Style for both the internal link text and the hyperlink text to aid the users’ navigation around the document.

Exporting the interactive PDF from InDesign

Remember to choose Adobe PDF (Interactive) when you’ve got the Export dialogue box up by going Cmd/Ctrl-E.

As I say in the video I like to set the Security to have None Changes Allowed in order to get rid of a very annoying pink bar along the top in Acrobat Reader when viewing the PDF. (Note to Adobe: fix this bug please!)

Creating e-books?

So, if you want to create an intuitive, beautiful and interactive PDF e-book to be sold online, I would very much recommend you do it in InDesign. Try to incorporate internal links, external links, video, etc., and as many exciting interactive elements as you can.

What other devices and interactivity can you think of to improve the humble PDF?

I would love to know your opinion in the comments below. And, if you found this post useful, please do me a favor and Tweet, Like or +1 it.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Giving away free gifts is excellent marketing. It fosters loyalty and brand recognition. I’m giving away free 2012 calendars as PDFs. I’m also making available the InDesign and Illustrator files that were used to create the PDFs, so you can create and brand your own calendars and do the same thing, if you so wish!

Branded calendars are classic marketing materials because they are the sort of thing that “hang around” for the whole year. So your logo and your marketing message will be seen for much longer than just a few days.

Literally thousands of visitors arrive at this site every year to download these calendars.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as a PDF file

I have two PDFs here for free download. One has the whole year on a single page and the other is a 12 page document with a month on every page.

You may like to download the above PDFs by going right-click and choosing “Save as…” or “Save target as…”.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as Illustrator files

The calendar which has the whole year on one page was created in Adobe Illustrator. Here is a version in Illustrator CS5 saved as an Adobe Illustrator file (.AI) plus, for those of you with earlier versions of Illustrator, there is an EPS saved as an Illustrator 9 file.

Free 2012 Calendars to download as InDesign files

The 12 page calendar with a month to a page was created in Adobe InDesign. InDesign is a bit of a nightmare when opening in legacy versions. Firstly, I created the calendar in InDesign version CS5, I then exported this as an InDesign Mark-up Language File (IDML), then opened that in InDesign CS4 and saved a copy, before, finally, exporting from CS4 an InDesign Interchange document (INX) which can be opened in CS3.

All of the PDFs, InDesign and Illustrator files

And here are the two calendars as PDFs, the two different Illustrator files and all the various InDesign files all together in a ZIP file.

Linked text frames/boxes

Both calendars have linked text boxes in the InDesign and Illustrator files. This means that you can use these calendars in 2013, 2014, 2015, and every year to come by just shunting the numbers on in the boxes. So if one month starts on a Monday in 2012 and a Tuesday in 2013, you can just add an extra carridge return or frame break and all the dates will move over to the correct days.

I explained this in more detail last year in this video I made:

As you can see in the video linked text frames in calendars automate their creation year-on-year.

Regular readers and new readers

I apologise to my regular readers who have seen this last year and a big “hello” to new readers who have come to this site for the first time to download these calendars. You would not believe how much traffic I get from this giveaway, which is why I do it every year.

Is it a bit early to give away 2012 calendars in mid-October 2011? I don’t think so. Now is about time graphic designers get requests to do calendars for the next year. I am seeing from my Google Analytics that I’m already getting traffic from people searching for “2012 calendars to download” or such-like, so I thought it best to create them now.

So, if you’ve found this useful please feel free to Tweet, Like or vote for this article and, if it’s not too early to say it, Happy New Year!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Here’s a present for my visitors and subscribers as a BIG “thank you” for all the support and encouragement I’ve received over the year!

Every year I send Christmas cards to all my clients with a calendar of the next year on the back. Putting something useful like a calendar on the back of a Christmas card creates extra value.

Single page 2011 Calendar in Illustrator EPS format download

Here is an Illustrator EPS document (CS2) of a
2011 calendar on one page.

Single page 2011 Calendar in Adobe Acrobat PDF format download

Here is an Adobe Acrobat PDF of a
2011 calendar on one page.

12 page 2011 Calendar in InDesign INDD format download

Here is an InDesign document (CS4) of a
2011 calendar with one month per page.

12 page 2011 Calendar in Adobe Acrobat PDF format download

Here is an Adobe Acrobat PDF of a
2011 calendar with one month per page.

A calendar you can use any year!

The calendars in Illustrator and InDesign come with linked text frames (or text boxes).

So, as you can see above, the dates are all linked. So if you want January to start on a Sunday (which it will in 2012) instead of Saturday, you type 26 and hit enter in the box before where 27 is now. Enter moves the text to the next linked text frame so that all the dates will shift over one day. It’s a lot better that moving them over one by one!

Here is a short video about linking text frames in InDesign and Illustrator using these calendars as an example.

This short video tutorial uses the above Illustrator and InDesign files as examples to explain how to link text frames.

I always appreciate feedback!

As always, if you found this useful, please use the buttons below to tweet, vote or recommend this article. I’d also love to hear your comments about the calendars.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The internet is awash with eBooks. It’s easy to see why – they’re fast, convenient and are a great way to consume and store reading material. They can be downloaded in seconds and many thousands can fit on a single USB stick. eBooks are also interactive, allowing you to search for text, make notes or drawings and follow hyperlinks.

Whilst many bloggers will want to provide their eBooks as PDFs to give them total control on the design, layout and typography of the product. ePubs, however, have reflowable text, making them ideal for reading on smaller handheld devices.

An ePub is a free and open eBook standard file format which can be read on a variety of handheld devices including the iPhone, iPad, Kobo eReader, Barnes & Noble Nook eReader, Sony Reader Touch Edition, etc. (just about every handheld reading device except the Kindle, basically).

What sort of eBooks should be created as ePubs?

Only text heavy books should be created as ePubs. If your eBook has many diagrams, tables, etc., then you should definitely create the eBook as a PDF.

Getting started in InDesign

For starters, you will only be able to do this in CS3, CS4 and CS5.

As mentioned before, ePubs are a free-flowing format and therefore, when creating your document in InDesign, you don’t need to bother about page size, page layout, facing pages, or anything like that.

Text formatting

Text should flow through only one series of linked text frames. Don’t put any text (chapter headings, callout text, page numbers) in separate text frames – it won’t come out in the right place. Flow chapter headings within the main text, forget about page numbers, and you should probably forget about callout text as well but you could include it as an anchored image.

Although fonts can be embedded, I have found that this only creates unnecessary problems and some ePub viewers will change the font anyway. Format your text in a bog standard font and only use the four weights: normal, bold, italic and bold italic.

Apply Paragraph Styles and Character Styles to all the text in your document to ensure that your formatted text is preserved. ePubs contain mark up files and separate Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – rather like a website – and InDesign uses the applied styles to generate the CSS. If your text is already formatted but not by Paragraph Styles and Character Styles, use Find/Replace to add Character Styles automatically.

The above settings apply a Character Style I’d named “bold character style” to all the bold text in the document. Even better, but sadly for CS4 only, you can use this preptext.jsx script which will add Character Styles to all the various text styles (bold, italic, superscript, etc.)

Add images as anchored objects

Graphics should be anchored within the main body of text. To create an anchored image, select the object with the Selection Tool (V) and cut (Cmd/Ctrl-X). Then double click in the text where you want the anchored object to appear – double clicking in text converts the Selection Tool to the Type Tool (T). Now paste (Cmd/Ctrl-V) in the anchored object which will now appear in the text and flow with it.

Divide long documents into separate files

In order to get chapters or sections to start on a new “page” you have to divide your book into separate InDesign documents. Then create an InDesign book file (.indb) by going File > New > Book and combine all the documents together in the correct order in the resulting palette.

Add metadata

Metadata information, such as the title, author, publisher, etc., is displayed in most eBook readers. In order to complete metadata entries, go File > File Info and in the resulting File Information dialog box click the Description tab and fill in the following fields:

• Document Title
• Author
• Description
• Keywords
• Copyright Notice

None of the other metadata fields are exported.

Exporting the ePub

To export from an InDesign document, go File > Export for Digital Editions and from an InDesign book file, choose Export Book for Digital Editions from the book palette.

In the Digital Editions Export Options dialog box I mostly kept to the default settings. I had Include Document Metadata checked (as I had set metadata in the File Information dialog box, I chose Defined Styles for Base for CSS Styles (as I had specified all styles as Paragraph and Character Styles) and I unchecked Include Embeddable Fonts as I found them to cause problems.

Delivering the ePub

ePub can be delivered by email but I’ve found it is better to upload them to Bookworm or Ibis Reader so that they can be accessed online. You have to get them to validate in order to do this which can be an extra headache. I’ve found the people at the ePub section of the MobileRead forums really helpful with little validation problems. If you’re OK with XML and CSS, the ePub can be opened and the separate files edited with oXygen XML Author.

Further reading and links

• To view ePubs on your computer download Adobe Digital Editions
• Some “How to” PDFs from Adobe, only for CS4 though
• The most useful tutorials I found were two video podcasts from Gabriel Powell at InstantIndesign.com called Creating an eBook with InDesign (Part 1) and Creating an eBook with InDesign (Part 2)

Conclusion

Creating an ePub is sadly not as easy as it looks. But once you’ve done it a few times it should become pretty straightforward. It was a really good feeling to finally read my eBook on an iPhone! If anyone wants my How to Market Yourself Online ebook as an ePub please get in touch.

But, as always, what about you? Has anybody any experience of creating book files for handheld devices and smart phones? What were your experiences?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

A guest post from Louise Baker of Zen College Life

For web designers, developers and amateur creative types that work with a lot of graphics and image manipulation, the decision of which software to use is an important one. While Adobe Photoshop and its related Creative Suite programs are well respected throughout the world, open source software is making some big gains in terms of popularity and acceptance. Each graphics software release continues to push the envelop of what’s possible in terms of design. Here’s a quick comparison between the proprietary and free, open source software available for graphic designers and web developers.

Photoshop vs. GIMP

As the ultimate Swiss Army Knife of image manipulation and layout creation, the latest version of Adobe Photoshop offers an impressive array of capabilities for almost every need. Photoshop handles paths, layers, color saturation and transparency impeccably. It’s easily the most polished raster graphics editor available. It’s also fairly expensive, retailing at a price of $699. It’s main competitor is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, also commonly referred to simply as GIMP. GIMP is free, stable and supports a rich ecosystem of handy plugins, brushes and tools to extend the functionality of the basic program, but illustrators who are long used to Photoshop may find GIMP too dissimilar to use effectively.

InDesign vs. Scribus

When it comes to desktop publishing applications, the Adobe InDesign package is the go-to program for crafting newsletters, posters, promotional fliers and e-books. It allows even the most inexperienced user the ability to quickly and easily set layouts and play around with designs. Scribus is the closest equivalent to InDesign in terms of ease of use and functionality. Boasting many of InDesign’s main features and with a similarly uncomplicated user interface, Scribus is available as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. The major drawback is its inability to work with the file formats used by Adobe’s InDesign.

Illustrator vs. Inkscape

Finally, there’s the matter of vector graphics editing. Adobe Illustrator is one of the oldest vector graphics tools on the market. As such, it’s a highly stable and powerful way to work with icons, logos and any other type of 3D graphics that are beyond the capabilities of Photoshop or GIMP. Popular with Linux users, Inkscape has many of the same capabilities as Adobe Illustrator when it comes to vector graphics manipulation. Though lacking some of the refinement of Illustrator, it consistently produces smaller, lighter SVG files without a lot of “garbage code” and bloat.

Conclusion

Though pricey, using Adobe software has some key benefits. The Adobe Creative Suite is the industry standard for graphic design at present and will remain dominant for the foreseeable future. As such, there are many more tutorials and guides available online for beginners. Open source software, though free, has a steeper learning curve and can be challenging for the inexperienced. For many, the established community of developers using Adobe software and the support system they provide is enough of a reason to choose Creative Suite tools. For more advanced users, open source software is an appealing and low-cost alternative.

Louise Baker is a freelance blogger and journalist who writes for Zen College Life, the directory of higher education, distance learning, and online schools. She most recently wrote about the top online colleges.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Download a free copy of an interactive PDF eBook

I have just made a free PDF eBook called How to Market Yourself Online.

Click the button above to download a copy of this PDF as I will be referring to it in this article.

Most eBooks are PDFs. PDFs are easily exportable from Microsoft Word. But if you want complete creative control and interactivity (with not only external links to websites but also an internal navigation system) it is better to use Adobe InDesign to create it. However, if you don’t have InDesign (and it is rather expensive), please read on as most of the points I make here can be applied to all eBooks regardless of the application used to create them.

Why use a PDF?

The PDF format was originally created for storing and editing printed documents and because of this text does not flow to fit the screen. And, because the PDF embeds the fonts you are using, the page elements are pretty much set in stone and look identical on any computer with Acrobat Reader installed. With PDFs, What You See in the application you use to create it Is What You Get when your readers view it and print it.

So, if your readership would like to print your document on a desktop printer or view it on a laptop or desktop computer, PDF is the file type for your eBook!

(For eBooks that are created for handheld devices such as phones and eReaders, ePub is the file type to go for. I will be writing another article about creating ePub documents soon!)

Page format

Page size: Create your eBook with a page size that will fill up a computer screen and print off on a desktop printer without any wasted paper. So, I would choose something like the north american letter size of 8.5″ × 11″ or 216mm × 279mm landscape (that’s 11″ or 279mm wide by 8.5″ or 216mm deep – on it side, otherwise it won’t fill up the screen). Alternatively, you could try the european A4 size landscape if that’s where your audience is. But, it’s the landscape / horizontal format which is key here.

Obviously, you don’t have facing pages in an eBook – there are no left or right pages. Text stretching across the wide page is difficult to read so make sure the text is large and doesn’t run across the full width of the page – or you could go for 2 or 3 column.

Also obviously, leave a few millimeters of margin all around the text so that nothing gets cut off by any of your readers’ printers.

Make every page the same size within your PDF even though it’s possible to have multiple sizes.

Fonts: Pick easy to read fonts. You might be partial to a bit of Comic Sans or Brush Script but would you really want to read more than a couple of paragraphs in them? Trust me, you wouldn’t. Choose a dependable serif for your body text (I went for Bell MT) and a solid unobtrusive sans serif for headings and subheaders (for me, DIN).

Paragraph styles: In order to add some air or white space into the proceedings, I preferred to add space in between the paragraphs rather than indent the first line. Other than the body text Paragraph Styles, here are some others I created to make my eBook.

• Headings
• Subheads
• Bullets
• Blockquotes
• Small text style (for copyright line and credits)

Colors: In order to inject a bit of variety into the gray or black text, I would choose a couple of colors for the headings and links in the document.

Images: Again, to add a little color, choose some images to insert into the eBook’s text. Maybe one for each section head like I did. But keep them small – you don’t want the PDF’s file size to be too big. Images should be RGB JPEGs.

Navigation, branding and header & footer area

The header and footer areas of an eBook are a great way to provide branding and navigational aids to your readers. There are four elements I put on the InDesign Master Page in the header and footer area (although their usage depends on the type of eBook):

• Page number: This is crucial for navigation. In InDesign go, Type > Insert Special Charecter > Markers > Running Page Number, or Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-Option-N. It is depicted as an “A” on the Master Page but gives the page number on every page of your eBook.
• Contents page button: I set the magnification in the button to Inherit Zoom
• Next and previous page buttons: Again, I set the magnification in the button to Inherit Zoom
• Your logo: Great excuse for a bit of publicity for yourself or your company. Make it a button with a hyperlink back to your website.

Cover page and contents page

Make a cover page with an internal link to the contents page. Make the second page a contents page with each section or chapter in the list linking to that section or chapter in the eBook. Add page numbers for reference as well. With this contents page plus the contents page button on every page, your reader is never lost in your document. The reader knows he or she can flick through the eBook, easily finding the bits that they want.

Exporting the document

When exporting the eBook there are several important things to consider:

• File size: Compress the images so they’re not too big and not too small.
• Make sure it has RGB brightness: In InDesign, go Edit > Transparency Blend Space > Document RGB and make sure it is outputted to a RGB destination.
• Make sure all hyperlinks and internal links are working: In the InDesign Export Adobe PDF dialog box under Option: check Optimize for Fast Web View, and under Include: check Non-Printing Objects, Hyperlinks and Interactive Elements.
• File name: Call it by it’s first name. Not something like “EBOOK495-8343Xv22.pdf”.

Security

Once exported and you’re happy with the way it looks (that took me months, by the way, but that’s another story!) there are some super-important things you can do to protect your material from plagiarism. Get Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can download a 30-day free trial, which is OK because you’ll only need it for 5 minutes!

Open your lovely new PDF eBook in Acrobat Pro and go File > Document Properties… or Cmd/Ctrl-D. Click on the Security tab. In the Security Method dropdown menu choose Password Security. Click on the first radio button – “Encrypt all document contents”. Do not check the “Require a password to open the document” check box. But check the “Restrict editing and printing of the document”. Then enter a password and let your readers be able to print the document but not edit it by choosing the relevant options in the two dropdown menus:

Printing allowed: choose high resolution or low resolution, it’s up to you. Changes allowed: none. Do not check “Enable copying of text, images and other content” but check “Enable text access for screen reader devices for the visually impaired”. Click OK, save and you’re done.

Now your readers will be able to read it and print it. But people will find it difficult to copy your work. Try selecting text in Acrobat Reader and copying it once you’ve done this. You can’t. Haha!

Conclusion

As ever, I’m really keen to hear any of your feedback both on my eBook and my method and advice on creating one.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I haven’t written as many posts as I would have liked on this blog in the last couple of months. The reason? I have been creating an e-book which will be used as an incentive for join my mailing list. It’s ready now!

Why did I do this?

Many reasons … I wanted to do something a bit different; to showcase my own design of an interactive PDF; to get some extra exposure. But mostly, I want to take my site to the next level.

The subject matter of the e-book is something I’m passionate about – setting up and getting noticed with a self-hosted WordPress site; SEO, social media and blogging.

Five years ago I was waking up every morning wearily to do uncreative artwork in other people’s companies. After five years of blogging, I run my own company where I am habitually involved in incredibly creative and interesting work for the most amazing and wide-ranging group of clients.

The change I have seen in my own life is testimony to the power of blogging with a self hosted WordPress site. But creating a blog is one thing; developing a website which attracts regular traffic and returning visitors is quite another, and I have outlined every step I took to achieve this in the 35-page PDF.

I will write more about creating an interactive PDF and using it as an incentive for a mailing list in the blog. I created the PDF in InDesign and I used Vertical Response to sort out the list and the sign up form.

OK, so how do you get a copy?

Please follow this link below to my main sign up page where you will only have to fill in your email address (and, if you like, your first and last name).Then you will receive an email with a subscription link. After that you will receive another email which welcomes you to the list and has the link to the PDF.

I would be grateful for comments and I hope its helpful to some of you.

So, here’s the link:

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Supplying initial ideas

Some designers will tell you that they always design one option for themselves and one for the client. One very beautifully “designed”; the other more commercial. Personally, I like to supply two or three options, all of them for the client.

Try to show the client variety in your options and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different designs so that you can understand exactly what is needed.

Choosing great typefaces

Sometimes I like to use a combination of a serif and a sans serif typeface. Here the title is in the elegant Didot font and the body is in Futura, mostly Futura Light. Also instead of making body, or even title fonts, in black, I’ve experimented with different shades of gray.

Dealing with photography

If your advertisement has a product image in it – or any image for that matter – it is necessary to get it to reproduce as well as possible.

The photo that was decided upon for this ad was of a mature man modeling the product. There were a number of things about the photo that were improved upon (blotchy skin, dirty fingernails, wrinkles, etc.) The original photo is on the left; the re-touched photo on the right.

To make these improvements in Photoshop I used the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to get rid of blemishes and the Dodge Tool (O) to lighten areas.

Lastly, I changed the image’s mode to CMYK and made sure in Image Size that it was roughly the size it will be when reproduced with a resolution of 300 ppi.

Writing great copy

I could write a lot more about this subject, especially about the headline. This headline actually came from the client and, along with the picture, fulfills most headline criteria. It is attractive, attention-grabbing and clear.

Always be at pains to make the text as simple as possible, being informative about the benefits of the product or service.

And … don’t forget the spell check.

Supplying the artwork

Make sure all images and logos were high resolution and CMYK. Also make sure that the text was CMYK, especially that the black or gray text is made out of K (key black), without any C, M or Y. There should be no RGB colors in the artwork.

I laid this out in Adobe InDesign and exported it as a PDF/X-1a:2001. I finally checked it in Adobe Acrobat Professional where you can see all four plates separately to check that there aren’t any rogue elements in the ad that may cause problems later.

I have written further information about preparing artwork for print and supplying artwork to printers in this website.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?

The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over the years of doing this.

Make sure you import your client’s text into InDesign and Quark rather than copy and paste it

Why? Because it keeps the formatting (bolds, italics, heads, subheads, notes, etc). If your client has gone through the document and done this there’s no need for you to do it again. OK, you may not like your client’s choice of formatting or font, you can change that globally over the whole document in seconds. Use the Style Sheets or Utilities > Font Usage in Quark and Paragraph Styles or Type > Find Font in InDesign to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse.

If you want a presentation to look good don’t do it in PowerPoint

I know this isn’t always an option as all the world and his wife seem to want to use PowerPoint for any purpose but, if you can’t persuade the client to go for Premiere or Keynote, there’s always the PDF. The good old PDF will give you an excellent presentation with vectors supported, movies played and excellent interactivity.

You’ve got to do it PowerPoint, now what do you do?

In PowerPoint go File > Page Setup and that’ll give you the size of the slide. Then go to Photoshop go File > New and type in the same height and width values from PowerPoint, create your attention-grabbing masterpiece, save it as a PNG (transparency is supported) and then back in PowerPoint go Insert > Picture > From File… and select your PNG.

OK, so you can do that for every page of a 40 slide deck if your client wants to edit the text, but it’ll add a bit of extra fizz to the proceedings.

Get your client to provide you with the source files

If there’s a blurry bitmap graph or chart that you need to beautify, ask if it exists as a PDF or ask for the source files. Even if it was the ugly result of a PowerPoint-Excel partnership the chances are it can be copied and pasted into Illustrator and the type can be changed and the excess crud can be deleted.

Similarly a PDF can be opened from within Illustrator with the type and the vectors editable, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, if you’re lucky!

For both of these routes you may find all the elements refusing to be ungrouped. If this is the case go Object > Clipping Mask > Release and Object > Compound Path > Release and then ungroup and see where that gets you.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

It’s the joyous season of the dreaded companies’ annual report and accounts where artworkers and printers try to make money by producing horribly boring documents full of endless tables with horrendously dull titles like “Intangible Assets”.

But, do you know the trick of how to get columns of figures to line up, as the accountants like, with the bracketed figures (negative numbers) aligning with the figures not in brackets (positive numbers)? If producing the tables in normal tabbed text in both Quark and InDesign the solution is to select the tab icon that looks like an arrow with the decimal point after it in both applications. This not only lines your numbers up on the decimal point if you have them and also “hangs” the brackets outside the numbers.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Choosing a group of colours can be a daunting exercise. OK, so there’s some golden rules to follow, like “always choose from the same third of the colour wheel”. Golden rules are made to be broken.

Adobe has a colourful website to make this a bit easier. If you sign in you can download the colourways as a .ase which can be imported to CS2 and CS3 applications via the Swatches palette (InDesign CS2/CS3: Load Swatches; Illustrator CS2/CS3: Open Swatch Library: Other Library; Photoshop CS2/CS3: Load Swatches). A pleasure to use!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

X and Y You can choose where your x and y measurements for page objects are taken in the Control bar – top left, top centre, top right, middle left, middle centre, middle right, bottom left, bottom centre or bottom right. With Quark it’s top left – and that’s it!

Duplicate spread You can add a new spread or page exactly the same as another one, in Quark you must add a page and then copy the elements.

Fill frame proportionately (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Option Shift -C) Get a picture to fit into a box without the edges showing. After this go center content (Command (Ctrl for PCs) Shift -E) and you’re just about there with most photos!

Interactive PDFs Put buttons on a master page to go to next page, previous page and contents/home page. InDesign has the ability to add numerous other interactive options to PDFs that Quark doesn’t. More about this here.

Print ready high resolution PDFs Export direct from InDesign, don’t even think about exporting them from Quark for final artwork – you have to print a PostScript file and distill it. More about this here.

Constrain proportions You have the choice to constrain proportions of boxes in the control palette by clicking on the chain/broken chain icon, you can’t constrain proportions in Quark’s measurements palette. This is so handy!

Change case Everything in caps and you want it in lower case? Can’t be bothered to capitalise words? It’s a time-saver.

Overprint preview Ever set white-out text to overprint? I have. Wish I didn’t!

Data merge Order fields from a spreadsheet direct to your document.

I haven’t even talked about drop shadows, object styles or transparencies – let alone importing AIs and PSDs.

On the other hand I still prefer the way Quark handles type and I haven’t found reliable quick keys for editing point size, leading, tracking and baseline shift in InDesign. I’m also still getting to grips with the way InDesign handles hyphenation and justification.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The advantages of PDF publishing over internet publishing are:
1 No need to worry about browser and platform differences or about being standards compliant – if you can view a PDF properly in Reader the chances are that everyone else in the world can.
2 You can use any font you want.
3 Vector graphics appear pin sharp at any magnification.
4 You don’t need an internet connection to read or print it.

Ah, I hear you say, the web is interactive but PDFs aren’t. Wrong again!

More about this subject and how to create them in InDesign.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Take navigation. Everybody loves to click on articles in a contents page to go to that page, or click on an icon to get back to the contents page, or click “next page” or “previous page” to move through the document. Set up a master page in InDesign with a button set to the bookmark of your contents page and left and right “page turners” set to previous page and next page and, bang, you’ve done it! No need to mess around with your PDF in Acrobat Professional tediously setting all the links.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

But what if you want some text boxes to wrap around images and others to flow over? Move to front like Quark? No! Go Object > Text Frame Options and check Ignore Text Wrap whilst having the text box selected. However, if you do want Text Wrap to work like Quark‘s Runaround in Preferences (Command/Control -K), under the Composition tab, you can check Text Wrap Only Effects Text Beneath. Text beneath an item with Text Wrap applied will flow around the object – move the text to front and it will flow over the object.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

You can still use most of the keyboard shortcuts, including F7 to show and hide guides, command-shift , and . to increase and decrease both type and pictures within a box, command-option-shift ; and ‘ to increase and decrease leading by 1 point, command-option-shift [ and ] for tracking/kerning, command-option-shift – and = for baseline shift. (Shift) F5 for move to front (back). Command (PC Control) -I to view/hide text invisibles.

However, setting the Step/Repeat is command-option U, and opposed to command-option D in Quark. Whereas command- D is still duplicate.

There’s a speedy shortcut for editing text in InDesign (Illustrator users will be familiar with this). When you’re using either selection tool, just double-click on any text box—your cursor will immediately change to the Type tool.

Quark users migrating to InDesign will find the master page items behaving differently. Elements on master pages appear locked on the normal pages. To edit an item on a normal page, command-shift click on the object. Beware! This also moves the item to the front. Use layers to keep it behind other elements if that is desired.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.