During a training earlier today, several colleagues were shocked at how much I know about InDesign. But it made perfect sense to me, because of something I did over a year ago: I went through every visible button in my InDesign workspace and figured out what they did. With one to three buttons a day, … Continue reading On looking at every button
Tag: InDesign
On the relief and irritation of finally figuring out a problem that had annoyed you for years
It happened every once in a while: elements in my InDesign template would refuse to align to my 1” margin. Frames would instead snap to 0.097”, resisting my attempts to nudge them over to the 1” margin until I zoomed WAY IN and forced them over. Today, I discovered why. (For the InDesign nerds out … Continue reading On the relief and irritation of finally figuring out a problem that had annoyed you for years
On holding your horses with big changes
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 … Continue reading On holding your horses with big changes
On unlearning and my first InDesign experience
Learning is hard; unlearning is harder. As I've paged through Real World Adobe InDesign CC, I've had a painful realization: I need to unlearn lots of what I thought I knew. The specifics are both boring and embarrassing, so I'll leave them aside. What I will speak to is one (now evident) downside of my … Continue reading On unlearning and my first InDesign experience
On thinking (wrongly) that there was no more for me to learn about InDesign
On a whim, I picked up Real World Adobe InDesign CC at the library a few months ago. It turns out that the bulky 2013 publication—it's over a decade old!—was not in high demand in the Jeffco Public Library system. It sat, unread, for many weeks on my kitchen counter, literally gathering dust as the … Continue reading On thinking (wrongly) that there was no more for me to learn about InDesign
On working for a client
It was only my first job, more than a decade ago, that I had something like a client. As a marketing assistant in the academic books division at Oxford University Press, I fielded emails and calls from several dozen authors. The requests were simple—a sales flyer or an update on the number of book copies … Continue reading On working for a client
On attentional bias
We can't pay attention to everything. Every waking moment of the day, the world hurls information at us. Given the firehose of data pumped in through our senses, our minds have to be selective about what deserves our attention. With bias built into our systems from the get-go, it's no surprise that there are additional … Continue reading On attentional bias
On the nitpicking joy of InDesign layout
I've been a mere two weeks off from work for paternity leave, and I missed it. One thing I missed, but didn't expect to? The utter banality of InDesign layout. Many knowledge work jobs have their weeds—when you break out your finetooth comb and lose yourself in the details. The other way to consider this … Continue reading On the nitpicking joy of InDesign layout
On the dismay (and hopeful joy) of a “snag log”
One reason for my prolonged absence from posting is that I've been spending an inordinate amount of time overhauling some of my processes at work. Mainly, this has involved rethinking several steps of my production process for a proposal package through InDesign. But rather than get into the nitty-gritty of InDesign updates, I wanted to … Continue reading On the dismay (and hopeful joy) of a “snag log”
Why does bureaucracy keep growing?
Why does bureaucracy grow and grow and grow? Business consultant Ichak Adizes, in his book The Pursuit of Prime, suggests that the kudzu-like growth of bureaucracy is because bureaucracy is easy. Form is simple. There is no need to think. We have only to repeat what we are used to doing. Over time, form wins … Continue reading Why does bureaucracy keep growing?
Taylor Coe 