Why should we use InDesign for Catalog Design

[anisurreza]

Illustrator provides us a lot of functionality to design brochures/flyers/posters. But in case of catalog sometimes we need to do some repetitive tasks and making a single change through out the catalog using illustrator might take a day!

InDesign provides us some specific features which are very helpful for preparing catalog. Some of the main features are highlighted below:-

Defining page margin and column: Our catalog pages might be of 3 or 4 columns, rather than putting a text area and breaking that into columns, we can divide the page into multiple columns easily.

Text Expansion: When we have a topic that needs multiple pages, using InDesign text can be easily expanded throughout multiple pages.

Master Page Concept: We have to somehow make a copy of the consistent design elements (e.g: header,footer of the catalog pages) for every page of the catalog. What we can do is create a master page , put our common elements their. Then we can create child pages that will inherit the content of the master page. Any changes made in the master page will be reflected in the child pages. Besides we can have multiple master pages in a single document.

EPS Output: Sometimes we may need different output other than InDesign default file format. In that case InDesign has EPS output feature along with PDF output. And all the pages can be individually output as EPS with a single click!

Page Numbering: Maintaining page number in catalog is a big hassle as the topic length might change. One single topic's length change requires to re-number all the pages followed by that topic.

Centralizing Resources: We may place/link images from various sources. Somehow if someone delete a image from a certain directory that was used in the catalog, link will be broken. In InDesign after the design works end, we can centralize all the resources to a single directory. Which will help us to track any "file missing" issue within a very short time.

Masking gets easier: If we want to crop an image in illustrator, we have to take a transparent rectangle of our expected size, then apply clipping mask to the image. InDesign allows us to mask any image very easily. We can put the image in placeholder and then adjust the view of the image!

Despite of all this features, there are few disadvantages too. When multiple designers work on a single catalog, there might be some problem as everyone needs to work on the same file. In that case, breaking the catalog by topics collection can be a solution. Another issue is high hardware specifications. As you expect, this is just, the more pages we have in a single document, the better configuration we need to work on that catalog.

Above all , considering all the features we get in InDesign I think we should use it for catalog design, that might save us a lot of time and besides designers can concentrate more on the design part rather than maintaining it.

[amit]

catalog Illustrator e o kora jai. main factor ta holo...amader desh r print industry te Illustrator 10 ta holo standard. ar baire print hoi besi InDesign diye.
apnar info r jonno thanks. helpful

[anisurreza]

InDesign ey kintu eps export korar option asey, sheta utilize kora uchit...

[asifshahid]

thanks Reza for the short article. InDesign is also very demanding in Australia in print industry. You have to have InDesign knowledge here to get a job. I have very little idea on this I have a plan to enroll a short course(2 days) on this very soon. thanks again.

[amit]

InDesign ey kintu eps export korar option asey, sheta utilize kora uchit...

Illustrator e EPS/SVG/PDF sob option e asa. kintu "File > Export" e na. ota holo under "File > Save As..." a.

[amit]

thanks Reza for the short article. InDesign is also very demanding in Australia in print industry. You have to have InDesign knowledge here to get a job. I have very little idea on this I have a plan to enroll a short course(2 days) on this very soon. thanks again.

ha boss, first world r sob country gulatei print industry standard holo InDesign.

but i hope you can learn indesign crash course within 2 days, they are quite similar to Illustrator