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November 8, 2007

A record 36 pizzas, courtesy of Fig Leaf Software, were consumed by a full-capacity attendance during the hour before the meeting started. Representatives from EEI Communications and Training Resources staffed “The Answer Desk,” a new, regular pre-meeting feature. Members that attended were also able to pick up the premiere issue of FPO Magazine, courtesy of the publisher, Rob Sugar.

Attendance was so great that we had to open an overflow room. Thanks to the folks at the US Navy Memorial Auditorium and Adobe Connect, we had the second venue up and running within 30 minutes with a video link and bi-directional voice communication.

The speaker for the evening was Michael Murphy, host of “theindesigner” podcast and video icast.

The presentation topic, Styles = Substance, took a look at the big picture styles and how styles have become the “warm beating heart” of InDesign CS3. Michael Murphy demonstrated by use of examples and a styles relationship chart, how styles reach out in an InDesign document as well as the relationship between styles. The examples demonstrated were: character styles, paragraph styles, multiple character styles nested within paragraph styles, “looping nested styles” inside of a paragraph style, how to base styles on other styles, object styles, bullets / numbering and more.

Included was an in-depth look at the Object Styles and Table of Contents option panels. A demonstration of how to pre-style an entire Microsoft Word document in InDesign CS3 before importing the file was well received by attendees. The speaker showed many additional new ways of how styles are used in InDesign CS3. An example was demonstrated of how to use the multi-file place feature, new to ID CS3. The presentation also included how to use Frame Fitting Options and Find/Change examples to create and use styles.  Michael was able to provide great insight on using text variables in a document using CS3.

Style relationships throughout InDesign
A handout from Michael Murphy
Download [PDF: 243 KB]  

What the attendees had to say 

“The CS3 light has been turned on with this single presentation about the substance of styles.”

“Are you kidding me!!  It’s Michael!”

“Fantastic. Really useful, practical, well-organized.  The bread & butter of layout.”

“I wish it could have gone on longer!  I’m going to use this tomorrow.”

“Michael is a real master.  Thoroughly enjoyable.”

“Nice, nice, nice!  Lots to learn but big payoff!”

“This is the best topic I’ve attended so far. It’s given me a whole lot of ammo to convince my boss that our in-house design department needs to switch from Quark 7 to InDesign CS3.”

Ken Chaletzky
Copy General Corp.
Washington, D.C. Chapter Representative

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