When I started back at work this week, there was a small goal lurking in the back of my mind:
Reformat a bunch of stuff in our InDesign templates.
I’d spent some dozens of hours tooling around in InDesign over my leave and had discovered all kinds of random nitpicky things that I was excited to implement and change in my working templates.
So, with a few free minutes on Tuesday, I double-clicked one of my INDT files open from my server and then gleefully—villainously, even!—rubbed my hands together, waiting for the load screen to finish.
But then…well, I had second thoughts.
Did I really want to upend this document? After all, I’d spent countless hours tweaking and adjusting it. Did I really want to throw chunks of it out the window in favor of some recently discovered hacks?
So I sat back in my chair, a little irritated.
The best thing, I saw, was to wait. Wait at least to use the template again. Did I really need to change the Object Style here? Was it worth the 30 minutes I was about to spend? Were there unforeseen consequences to such changes?
Far better to settle back in and give it some time. Learning and using InDesign is more a marathon than a sprint. There will be plenty time later to make those adjustments—or decide to not make them at all.
Taylor Coe 