InDesign template resources

Starting an InDesign layout from a template can be useful in many ways. They can be a way for an inexperienced InDesign user to create a complex project quickly. Deconstructing a well-designed template can be a good way to learn more about InDesign. Templates can be a useful way for non-designers to take advantage of someone else's good design sense. They can even be useful for experienced designers who need to create a project very quickly with a very low budget. Here are five sources for InDesign templates:

1. Your hard drive: If you have InDesign CS3 or CS4 installed, choose File > New > Document From Template. This will launch Adobe Bridge, and a directory full of templates that come with InDesign will be displayed. If you no longer have CS3/CS4 installed, the templates may still reside on your hard drive in Hard drive/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Templates/en_US/InDesign (Mac) or Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Templates/en_US/InDesign (Windows).

2. InDesignSecrets.com: Adobe stopped including templates after InDesign CS4. But InDesignSecrets received permission from Adobe to post all the templates on InDesignSecrets.com.

3. The InDesign Ideabook by Chuck Green is a CD-ROM/Book that contains 315 high-quality templates. Nicely designed with Chuck's clean and simple style, these templates are all well-constructed.

4. Stocklayouts is a resource for templates that are highly designed for specific uses, such as a golf tournament brochure, a brew pub menu, and an accounting services brochure for example. Stocklayouts include high-resolution, royalty-free artwork.

5. GraphicRiver is a "micro stock" site for templates. The templates here are user-submitted, and generally sell at a low price. Since the templates are user-submitted, the design quality (and presumably the file construction) varies in quality.

Book recommendation

The last few days I've been perusing "Vector Basic Training: A Systematic Creative Process for Building Precision Vector Artwork" by Von Glitschka. Anyone who is serious about learning how to do vector illustration better in Adobe Illustrator needs this book.

The core objective of the book is to help designers and illustrators build vector artwork more precisely and accurately. A secondary purpose is to encourage designers to draw, draw and draw. The book is filled with lots of examples of the author's work, with specific notes on the processes used to create them. Included is a DVD with four hours of screencasts as well as example source files.

If you want to become a Jedi master of Bezier curves, get this book!

Locking objects in InDesign CS5 or newer

Adobe changed the way the Lock feature works in InDesign CS5. I think the change is a huge improvement, but there are a few subtleties that you need to be aware of.

1. The new Lock is a "true" lock. When an object is locked, you can't do anything with it, unlike the previous "lock position" command in previous versions.

2. You can lock objects 5 different ways: a) Object > Lock, b) command-L (Mac) or ctrl-L (Windows), c) by clicking in the lock column to the left of the object in the Layers panel, d) by clicking in the lock column to the left of the parent layer of the object in the Layers panel (which locks all the objects on that layer) e) by hiding a layer (which effectively "locks" the objects on the layer, since the objects can no longer be selected).

3. You can unlock objects 5 different ways: a) Object > Unlock All on Spread (which unlocks all the objects on the currently selected spread), b) command-option-L (Mac) or ctrl-alt-L (Windows), (which also unlocks all the objects on the currently selected spread), c) by showing Frame Edges (View > Extras > Show Frame Edges), and then clicking on the padlock icon in the upper-left corner of the frame, d) clicking on the padlock icon to the left of the object in the Layers panel, e) by clicking on the padlock icon to the left of a layer name in the Layers panel (which unlocks all the objects on that layer, unless individual objects on the layer have been previously locked).

4. If an object is locked, but the lock icon in the upper left corner of the object doesn't display when frame edges are shown, that means that the parent layer is locked. To unlock the object in this situation, you must unlock the parent layer by clicking the lock icon to the left of the layer name in the Layers panel.

5. If an object is locked and the lock icon is displayed in the upper left corner of the object, but nothing happens when you click on it, this means that the object is locked AND the parent layer is locked. To unlock the object, you must unlock the parent layer by clicking the lock icon to the left of the layer name, AND unlock the object by clicking the lock icon to the left of the object name in the Layers panel.

6. Surprisingly, the Object > Unlock All on Spread command will, indeed, unlock ALL objects, even those on hidden layers (but not objects on locked layers). In other words, a hidden layer isn't considered "locked" for the context of this command.