Product Description

Tap into the far-reaching potential of InDesign styles—from simple drop cap formatting to cross-media export to XHTML. Styles have the power to transform how design and production professionals approach and accomplish any project. Adopting a style-centric workflow can reduce tasks that would normally take days to mere hours, and tasks that would take hours to minutes or even seconds. Less time spent on repetitive tasks means more time for creating your best work.

This book explores every InDesign style to reveal its full potential. Throughout each chapter, you’ll pick up many tips and best practices gleaned from real-world experience. Two bonus chapters, “Stroke Styles” and “Project Planning with Styles in Mind” are available for download.

For “figure it out as I go” designers, embracing styles still allow you to work intuitively on the page. And this guide helps break preconceptions and bad habits transferred from less powerful page layout applications that keep new InDesign users from working in far more satisfying and productive ways.

Where InDesign is concerned, styles truly do equal substance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63636 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780321606068
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Michael Murphy is the creator and host of The InDesigner, an InDesign video podcast voted one of .net magazine’s Top 40 Tech Podcasts (2007). An award-winning designer with more than 20 years of hands-on experience, Michael is the creative director of Inbound Logistics magazine and a contributing writer for InDesign Magazine. He is an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, a classroom and on-site instructor, and a popular speaker at InDesign conferences and user groups. Watch his video podcasts and read his blog at www.theindesigner.com.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive and authoritative
This is now my authoritative reference for anything to do with InDesign styles. I'm always amazed at how much I don't know about this program after years of using it, and this book serves the intermediate/advanced InDesign user quite well. I hadn't even noticed grep styles in CS4 and I saved lots of work just reading the one chapter. There is additional online content too: Stroke Styles is the most thorough treatment of that subject I've found to date.

The book is really a great value if you have some InDesign experience. If you're new to InDesign, you should remember to get this book after you get comfortable, but there's too much assumed knowledge for the true beginner.

In-depth advice for harnessing the power of InDesign's styles
Michael Murphy is an experienced designer and an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign. I have followed his video podcasts at www.theindesigner.com since early 2006 and benefited considerably from his comprehensive tutorials. Naturally, when his book, "Adobe InDesign Styles", was announced I had high expectations that it would prove to be a valuable resource. I was not disappointed.
Mr. Murphy's credo is that advanced planning, organizing and building effective InDesign styles -- especially nested styles -- will save time and money and lead to greater creative freedom. He makes his case in chapter after chapter, by taking the reader step by step through well-chosen, real-world examples. In the chapter on GREP styles Murphy not only sheds light on a new InDesign feature -- admittedly difficult for most designer's to comprehend -- but goes on to parse and build some very practical examples ready to put to work in any number of InDesign documents.
"Adobe InDesign Styles" was written for intermediate to advanced users, so Mr. Murphy does not spend time on the basics, however I would suggest new users consider its purchase for two reasons: Michael Murphy's writing is clear and easy to follow and his argument for planning and organization will serve beginners well in avoiding bad habits and sloppy technique.
Web designers often speak of "best practices" when it comes to coding, Michael Murphy's book is the "best practices" guide when it comes to InDesign styles. I highly recommend it for all level users.

Steve Bretschneider
Principal,
Steve Bretschneider Design

A Must have book for all InDesign users.
As an author myself (Photoshop CS2 - Tamil Language), I observe the teaching methodologies of various authors, I am amazed by Michael Murphy's style of teaching. His podcasts are awesome, one cannot find a better way to learn and harness the power of Styles in InDesign without the aid of this book. I strongly recommend this book for Indesign users and even for advanced users alike.

Dave Vasudevan
DigiSlate.com