InDesign Magazine No. 6

InDesign Magazine, Vol 1. No. 6

Last fall I down­loaded the pre­mier issue (July/August 2004) of InDesign Magazine, and while it was chock-full of use­ful tips and tuto­ri­als I decid­ed at the time that ten graph­ic and web design mag­a­zines were enough for one mail­box, thank you very much. Well, after read­ing through the sixth and lat­est issue (June/July 2005) of InDesign Magazine I real­ize I may need to buy a big­ger mailbox.

The lat­est InDesign Magazine clocks in at 64 pages, almost twen­ty pages more than the pre­mier issue. This is the first issue to come out after the launch of Adobe InDesign CS2, and it offers arti­cles by Pariah S. Burke (of Quark VS Indesign​.com fame) on manip­u­lat­ing Photoshop lay­ers and lay­er comps in InDesign CS2, and Brian P. Lawler’s on col­or set­tings and col­or man­age­ment in InDesign CS2 as well as across the entire Creative Suite 2 thanks to the new Bridge appli­ca­tion and its Suite Color Settings.

The jew­el of the mag­a­zine is the cov­er sto­ry about the Document Design Team at Microsoft Game Studios. There’s the usu­al recount of the team’s reliance on QuarkXPress and the even­tu­al switch to InDesign where (sur­prise, sur­prise) they found cre­ative nir­vana. More illu­mi­nat­ing are the com­ments from the Microsoft design­ers and a glimpse into their work­flow (heavy use of InDesign text effects and Photoshop, dis­tri­b­u­tion around the world with device-independent PDFs).

The rest of the mag­a­zine is rel­a­tive­ly qui­et about CS2 but con­tin­ues to deliv­er the usu­al tuto­ri­als, tips and reviews. Kathy Sandler’s arti­cle on InDesign’s Preflight fea­tures is a valu­able one for those in the thick of the pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment or fly­ing with InDesign for the first time. Learn to use for­eign char­ac­ters and type­faces in InDesign with Diane Burns’ arti­cle on world lan­guages. And be sure to read Sandee Cohen’s InQuestion col­umn because, well, because she’s Sandee Cohen and seems to solve every wacky “how the heck?” ques­tion we can ask. Who else would build an opaque-to-transparent gra­di­ent by past­ing a feath­ered object into a sol­id one? She’s MacGyver, I tell you.

If you’re still unsure, vis­it www​.inde​sign​mag​.com and down­load the sam­ple issue (the pre­vi­ous issue). Try it out. You may real­ize that you need a big­ger mail­box too.

Jeremy Schultz (www​.jere​myschultz​.com) spe­cial­izes in graph­ic design, web design and illus­tra­tion and has been active in the design pro­fes­sion for six years. His designs have been fea­tured in nation­al pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Dynamic Graphics and SBS Digital Design, and he is the recip­i­ent of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals’ Guru Award, inclu­sion in the 2005 American Corporate Identity annu­al, and the First Place Winner in Quark VS InDesign​.com’s Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition.