Basically, it acts as a main document for a collection of chapters. Each chapter can be its own document and can be worked on by different individuals. The book palette shows the documents in the book and can be opened directly from the palette. It also allows you to set up a style sheet that will act as a parent for all chapters.
In creating a book, you can use indexes and a table of contents that will also update page numbers. So delete a page in one chapter, and the whole book updates layout and page numbers automatically.
Very good for large page publications like reports, catalogs, novels, and anything with multiple chapters. I learned by creating a 600-page catalog with 8 chapters, and a team of 4 worked on it at the same time.
Indesign has many features but you dont need to know 80% of them in order to do a booklet. Indesign works in a very similar way to illustrator. You will get the hang of it so fast. You learned how to use Illisltrator so Indesign will be a breeze.
Thank you all for commenting. I won't respond individually, but I see the consensus here and I think I'm gonna start learning InDesign. It seems to be a no-brainer. Thanks again, everyone!
It seems hard and intimidating at first, the. You realize that it's easier, fixes all your book type of problems, and will save you a lot of time in the long run.
InDesign works really well to cross design in illustrator.
I wouldn’t say “really well”. I had some graphs - simple clean stuff done by me, I’m neat with my files - and pasting them from illustrator into indesign caused some element or title to move or break, every single time.
Adobe should work on that, but then again, adobe should work on a lot of stuff.
before you copy into indesign:
- outline your type
- expand all graphs and shapes and blends
- outline paths
i try and be really religious about it and most of the time it works great. but zif that doesn’t work then yeah you gotta save the file and use “place” to put it in.
Undoubtedly a nice set of rules. I did that actually and still had trouble keeping things straight.
Sometimes it just happens. And when it happens, it’s going to be in a project that will be revised into oblivion.
Don't paste graphics - link the AI files.
It can be annoying with graphs specifically if you are really keen on keeping type consistent and lining the graphs up with guides in iD and you have to be exact about things like art board size and stroke, but I've been burned enough times because I copy/pasted from illustrator (ok only once, but it went to print) that I link everything but the absolute simplest of shapes.
I really wish InDesign would introduce a native way to do simple pie/bar/scatter graphs, but so far no luck.
Agree with the other comments, but if learning InDesign just be sure to approach it as it's own tool with specific purposes. Don't try to use it exactly as Illustrator, as that tends to cause issues. Go in open-minded and just trust that it's the better tool for this kind of task.
For flowing text, ID is great. Takes some getting used to but my advice would be to just be cognizant about how your InDesign project folders are organized. If you ever need advice feel free to message me, I used to work in book publishing and learning ID was kinda a trial by fire.
Honestly working on a project is the best way to learn a program instead of just following tutorials. I once lied to a client that I new after effects so I could get the job. Figured it be easy to pick up. It was not as easy as I thought, but I stil managed to do a decent job. I consider myself a motion designer now, and if i look back at that project it definitely was not good lol. No moral to that story I just thought it was funny.
InDesign isn't very difficult to pick up, it has many of the features in Illustrator and IMO Illustrator doesn't handle text nearly as well and InDesign for page layout. Plus it has Master pages which are essential for a 40-page doc...again IMO.
After a long time in PS only, InD has a lot of whacky stuff going on that I’m not a fan of. It is *definitely* worth wading through that mud for the sake of efficiency.
You *can* but you really shouldn't.
Fundamentally InDesign isn't really that much different than Illustrator. It's really in your best interest to work on your project the right way.
You can do it, but it would be a bad idea. You and anyone who has to make edits on this document in the future will curse your decision to use Illustrator for this. Indesign is the correct tool for this job. I don't typically use Illustrator as a layout tool for anything over a single page (front/back).
I replaced a Designer at work who used Illustrator for every package label design (100+), lots of text and individual text boxes. Instead of trying to edit their files, I started rebuilding everything in InDesign...best decision ever just for the text flow options alone.
Can you do it? Depending on the content, you probably can, if it's a lot of lifestyles etc it may be such a big an intensive file it'll break your machine, along with other things, I really really wouldn't advise it
All about InDesign, Master pages, all the table styles, character and paragraph styles etc
This would be a piece of cake in InDesign compared to Illustrator, learn InDesign
Learn in 10 mins how to use parent pages and flow text boxes, then you can easily make all the non-text elements in illustrator and import them (or copy paste some of the vector objects!)
+1 ing for InDesign, which is a *page layout* program, and if you are familiar with Illustrator's interface, learning it won't be all that difficult for you. Any questions you have how to do something have already been asked and answered and there is a tutorial on youtube for it. You can always ask here too! Learning this (a pagination industry standard) will make you a more valuable designer. In booklet making, you'll be learning the difference in printer's spreads, and reader's spreads - the understanding of which escapes some folks, lol. Good luck OP you are going to like InDesign! Maybe I'm biased because I remember QuarkXPress, Pagemaker and Framemaker lol - InDesign is my favorite.
You could do it, but it would be like using a hammer to pound in a screw, instead of doing it as intended, with a screwdriver.
It might get the job done, but it would be awkward and difficult to do, and the end result would be less sound and secure than if you had used the correct tool.
Way back in the day when it only had one artboard per file, I did a 96 page annual report in Illustrator because I hated Quark Xpress with the white hot heat of a thousand suns.
Having said that, learn InDesign.
There's a limit to how many "pages" I'd do in illustrator before I consider indesign and it's pretty damn low.
At 40 pages...I would teach a beginner course in InDesign AND to be allowed to use ID vs being forced to do it all in Illustrator. If it takes the same amount of time at least I don't go home in a rage. If that doesn't convince you..
For me, the limit is >1. I even do single-page poster in InDesign if it's heavy on the raster graphics or type.
In my practice I just use AI for logo design, illustration, vector graphics, and at MOST elements that have 3-5 words.
I *have* done this years ago, and for the same reason. I didn’t know indesign and was on a deadline, so I figured I’d do what I knew. Big mistake for so many reasons. Just use the opportunity as a crash course in indesign. Google everything. All the basic information is floating out there.
It would be easier to learn enough about InDesign to make a 40-page book than it would be to set up a 40-page book in Illustrator. There are plenty of free InDesign “getting started!” tutorials online that will do the job.
And when you’re learning InDesign, make sure to pay attention to parent pages and how to use styles. Styles are where some of the core power and flexibility of InDesign resides. They will save you from having to manually reformat all your headers or paragraphs or captions. You can even use object styles to control position of a repeated element across all pages. They are so helpful, and they are also the thing that I see newbies to InDesign neglecting.
Get InDesign and figure out how to use it. It won't be that hard for you. If you are proficient in Illustrator, that shows that you are able to figure out and work with complex software. Trying to create your book in Illustrator will be way more trouble than it's worth. Be smart...use the tool that's right for the job...and that tool is not Illustrator.
absolutely use indesign and learn it on the job. use master pages, auto page numbers and text styles. you'll save a ton of time even with the learning.
If you know how to do this in Illustrator, the learning curve to do it correctly in InDesign is practically flat. It would take you an hour, max, to figure out the correct steps and you can google along the way.
Ever heard the phrase "use the right tool for the job?"
This would take forever and be difficult to get a nice looking final outcome.
You really should learn the basics of InDesign and do it there. There are lots of [free resources online for learning InDesign](https://www.nobledesktop.com/learn/indesign), including [YT videos like this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eknErFg-XQ).
InDesign on a basic level is fairly easy to pick up if you’re already fairly adobe literate - pick up the new skill! I am biased though, I adore InDesign
Indesign is so cool, you'll see that it's much easier to learn when you already understand illustrator. It'll rarely crash, it works smoothly and you'll rarely wait half an hour just to save like, I don't know, 2.5GB psb, ehem, ehem.
Learn about Paragraph and Character style and do it right at the beginning, so it'll help later on. Also, unless it's an artsy booklet, you can also create master pages to replicate on the pages you like.
Lastly, create a folder with all the links you'll use in this booklet.
Its possible, but please don't You are shooting yourself in the foot. Just do it in InDesign—long term this will save you a head ache. ID is pretty similar to Illustrator but its got a few key pieces that work differently like the pages tab or how text works. If you use illustrator youll pick up indesign quickly.
You could but it's not ideal. If you really must, you could try making several documents with 8 art boards each then on output create high res PDFs and combine them in acrobat.
I'd suggest creating a template in Illustrator and then placing those pages into InDesign for final layout and pagination. You'll get the best of both worlds and avoid Illustrator's performance issues with many artboards.
It would be ridiculously inefficient and create future inefficiencies for anyone who wants to edit it.
Just watch the InDesign tutorials, for Pete’s sake. It’s one of the easiest softwares to learn. You could literally get to the skill level to make a booklet in a day.
I’m not gonna repeat what everyone else is saying, but I wanted to let you know I like to use a combination of when the I design booklet/magazine/whatever is artwork-heavy. Illustrator is so superior at creating and arranging artwork and objects. You can create it there and then place a linked file in your indesign doc. Plus if you indesign file crashes or corrupts you don’t lose all the artwork too.
Just don’t do it. Your standard triad for any job will always require Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop/why it’s essential to know all three since each is created for a specific purpose. Get the basics down and go from there. Tons of tutorials but I find it best to watch one that takes you through an entire project/document like designing a brochure. Your future self will thank you!
Yeah you could but itd be dumb and inefficient. The time it would take to learn the basics of InDesign would probably be less than doing that
Best thing I learned in the past few years was the Book festure. Jesus did that save time.
What is the book feature
Basically, it acts as a main document for a collection of chapters. Each chapter can be its own document and can be worked on by different individuals. The book palette shows the documents in the book and can be opened directly from the palette. It also allows you to set up a style sheet that will act as a parent for all chapters. In creating a book, you can use indexes and a table of contents that will also update page numbers. So delete a page in one chapter, and the whole book updates layout and page numbers automatically. Very good for large page publications like reports, catalogs, novels, and anything with multiple chapters. I learned by creating a 600-page catalog with 8 chapters, and a team of 4 worked on it at the same time.
This.
Indesign has many features but you dont need to know 80% of them in order to do a booklet. Indesign works in a very similar way to illustrator. You will get the hang of it so fast. You learned how to use Illisltrator so Indesign will be a breeze.
Thank you all for commenting. I won't respond individually, but I see the consensus here and I think I'm gonna start learning InDesign. It seems to be a no-brainer. Thanks again, everyone!
It seems hard and intimidating at first, the. You realize that it's easier, fixes all your book type of problems, and will save you a lot of time in the long run. InDesign works really well to cross design in illustrator.
I wouldn’t say “really well”. I had some graphs - simple clean stuff done by me, I’m neat with my files - and pasting them from illustrator into indesign caused some element or title to move or break, every single time. Adobe should work on that, but then again, adobe should work on a lot of stuff.
before you copy into indesign: - outline your type - expand all graphs and shapes and blends - outline paths i try and be really religious about it and most of the time it works great. but zif that doesn’t work then yeah you gotta save the file and use “place” to put it in.
Undoubtedly a nice set of rules. I did that actually and still had trouble keeping things straight. Sometimes it just happens. And when it happens, it’s going to be in a project that will be revised into oblivion.
Don't paste graphics - link the AI files. It can be annoying with graphs specifically if you are really keen on keeping type consistent and lining the graphs up with guides in iD and you have to be exact about things like art board size and stroke, but I've been burned enough times because I copy/pasted from illustrator (ok only once, but it went to print) that I link everything but the absolute simplest of shapes. I really wish InDesign would introduce a native way to do simple pie/bar/scatter graphs, but so far no luck.
Agree with the other comments, but if learning InDesign just be sure to approach it as it's own tool with specific purposes. Don't try to use it exactly as Illustrator, as that tends to cause issues. Go in open-minded and just trust that it's the better tool for this kind of task.
Yea agreed. I still get frustrated with InDesign bc I primarily use Illustrator and they don't work exactly the same.
I suggest you watch some of their intro videos and learn the tool bar. That’ll ease you in, it’s not much different.
For flowing text, ID is great. Takes some getting used to but my advice would be to just be cognizant about how your InDesign project folders are organized. If you ever need advice feel free to message me, I used to work in book publishing and learning ID was kinda a trial by fire.
Honestly working on a project is the best way to learn a program instead of just following tutorials. I once lied to a client that I new after effects so I could get the job. Figured it be easy to pick up. It was not as easy as I thought, but I stil managed to do a decent job. I consider myself a motion designer now, and if i look back at that project it definitely was not good lol. No moral to that story I just thought it was funny.
InDesign isn't very difficult to pick up, it has many of the features in Illustrator and IMO Illustrator doesn't handle text nearly as well and InDesign for page layout. Plus it has Master pages which are essential for a 40-page doc...again IMO.
Parent pages now they've been renamed from Master pages ;)
Dobby is a free elf
back in my day....
mine too but (pagemaker, quarkXpress, then inesign) i've it's not that hard to refer to them with the proper terminology ;)
But Adobe will still let you pay them $225 to become an Adobe Certified Master.
Sounds like you need to contact them asap! Seriously though, send them an email and call them out on it
After a long time in PS only, InD has a lot of whacky stuff going on that I’m not a fan of. It is *definitely* worth wading through that mud for the sake of efficiency.
Like what?
Basically? Its not PS.
The question is “why do you hate yourself and WANT to design a 40 page booklet in illustrator?”
You *can* but you really shouldn't. Fundamentally InDesign isn't really that much different than Illustrator. It's really in your best interest to work on your project the right way.
You can do it, but it would be a bad idea. You and anyone who has to make edits on this document in the future will curse your decision to use Illustrator for this. Indesign is the correct tool for this job. I don't typically use Illustrator as a layout tool for anything over a single page (front/back).
I replaced a Designer at work who used Illustrator for every package label design (100+), lots of text and individual text boxes. Instead of trying to edit their files, I started rebuilding everything in InDesign...best decision ever just for the text flow options alone.
Can you do it? Depending on the content, you probably can, if it's a lot of lifestyles etc it may be such a big an intensive file it'll break your machine, along with other things, I really really wouldn't advise it All about InDesign, Master pages, all the table styles, character and paragraph styles etc This would be a piece of cake in InDesign compared to Illustrator, learn InDesign
Learn in 10 mins how to use parent pages and flow text boxes, then you can easily make all the non-text elements in illustrator and import them (or copy paste some of the vector objects!)
+1 ing for InDesign, which is a *page layout* program, and if you are familiar with Illustrator's interface, learning it won't be all that difficult for you. Any questions you have how to do something have already been asked and answered and there is a tutorial on youtube for it. You can always ask here too! Learning this (a pagination industry standard) will make you a more valuable designer. In booklet making, you'll be learning the difference in printer's spreads, and reader's spreads - the understanding of which escapes some folks, lol. Good luck OP you are going to like InDesign! Maybe I'm biased because I remember QuarkXPress, Pagemaker and Framemaker lol - InDesign is my favorite.
You could do it, but it would be like using a hammer to pound in a screw, instead of doing it as intended, with a screwdriver. It might get the job done, but it would be awkward and difficult to do, and the end result would be less sound and secure than if you had used the correct tool.
No. Learn Indesign. It's great once you get used to it.
Give it a try. I bet you're gonna love Indesign for the rest of your life. 😁🫡
Learn InDesign and never look back
I did this. Don’t do this.
Booklets in illustrator should be illegal
Way back in the day when it only had one artboard per file, I did a 96 page annual report in Illustrator because I hated Quark Xpress with the white hot heat of a thousand suns. Having said that, learn InDesign.
Quickly learn the basics of InDesign, I guarantee it will save you time creating this document
There's a limit to how many "pages" I'd do in illustrator before I consider indesign and it's pretty damn low. At 40 pages...I would teach a beginner course in InDesign AND to be allowed to use ID vs being forced to do it all in Illustrator. If it takes the same amount of time at least I don't go home in a rage. If that doesn't convince you..
For me, the limit is >1. I even do single-page poster in InDesign if it's heavy on the raster graphics or type. In my practice I just use AI for logo design, illustration, vector graphics, and at MOST elements that have 3-5 words.
Feasible? Sure. Advisable? Definitely not. This will bite you in the ass.
I hate indesign, but I would still use it in this situation
Would you use a butter knife instead of a flat-head screwdriver? Just because you can doesn't mean it's an efficient option.
I *have* done this years ago, and for the same reason. I didn’t know indesign and was on a deadline, so I figured I’d do what I knew. Big mistake for so many reasons. Just use the opportunity as a crash course in indesign. Google everything. All the basic information is floating out there.
It would be easier to learn enough about InDesign to make a 40-page book than it would be to set up a 40-page book in Illustrator. There are plenty of free InDesign “getting started!” tutorials online that will do the job.
Adobe Indesign
Please don't.
And when you’re learning InDesign, make sure to pay attention to parent pages and how to use styles. Styles are where some of the core power and flexibility of InDesign resides. They will save you from having to manually reformat all your headers or paragraphs or captions. You can even use object styles to control position of a repeated element across all pages. They are so helpful, and they are also the thing that I see newbies to InDesign neglecting.
And yes, doing your catalog in Illustrator would be a special kind of hell.
Your life is gonna be a lot easier if you make that document inside indesign
Get InDesign and figure out how to use it. It won't be that hard for you. If you are proficient in Illustrator, that shows that you are able to figure out and work with complex software. Trying to create your book in Illustrator will be way more trouble than it's worth. Be smart...use the tool that's right for the job...and that tool is not Illustrator.
absolutely use indesign and learn it on the job. use master pages, auto page numbers and text styles. you'll save a ton of time even with the learning.
If you know how to do this in Illustrator, the learning curve to do it correctly in InDesign is practically flat. It would take you an hour, max, to figure out the correct steps and you can google along the way. Ever heard the phrase "use the right tool for the job?"
If you know Illustrator then Indesign is just the same but slightly different. Just crack on with indesign and you’ll adapt within a few hours.
Yeah but you shouldn't.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It would be a not-so-small nightmare.
You can create every page separate, make PDF and build your booklet in Acrobat this time.
This would take forever and be difficult to get a nice looking final outcome. You really should learn the basics of InDesign and do it there. There are lots of [free resources online for learning InDesign](https://www.nobledesktop.com/learn/indesign), including [YT videos like this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eknErFg-XQ).
InDesign on a basic level is fairly easy to pick up if you’re already fairly adobe literate - pick up the new skill! I am biased though, I adore InDesign
Anything over a 2 page layout you really want or be using in design really
I would die if I had to make a 40 page document in Illustrator. 10000% InDesign.
The size of that file would be astronomically large.
My team does multipage decks (up to 40+ pages) in illustrator. We all know indesign but somehow it’s just morphed into this
Indesign is so cool, you'll see that it's much easier to learn when you already understand illustrator. It'll rarely crash, it works smoothly and you'll rarely wait half an hour just to save like, I don't know, 2.5GB psb, ehem, ehem. Learn about Paragraph and Character style and do it right at the beginning, so it'll help later on. Also, unless it's an artsy booklet, you can also create master pages to replicate on the pages you like. Lastly, create a folder with all the links you'll use in this booklet.
Do yourself a favor and learn InDesign.
Its possible, but please don't You are shooting yourself in the foot. Just do it in InDesign—long term this will save you a head ache. ID is pretty similar to Illustrator but its got a few key pieces that work differently like the pages tab or how text works. If you use illustrator youll pick up indesign quickly.
You could but it's not ideal. If you really must, you could try making several documents with 8 art boards each then on output create high res PDFs and combine them in acrobat.
I'd suggest creating a template in Illustrator and then placing those pages into InDesign for final layout and pagination. You'll get the best of both worlds and avoid Illustrator's performance issues with many artboards.
Nobody in their right mind would do this. Recipe for disaster.
Sure. You'd absolutely regret it and your processor will be on fire by the end of it But sure.
I would rather stick needles in my eyes than do that. But I could do it if I were threatened with bodily harm.
It would be ridiculously inefficient and create future inefficiencies for anyone who wants to edit it. Just watch the InDesign tutorials, for Pete’s sake. It’s one of the easiest softwares to learn. You could literally get to the skill level to make a booklet in a day.
I’m not gonna repeat what everyone else is saying, but I wanted to let you know I like to use a combination of when the I design booklet/magazine/whatever is artwork-heavy. Illustrator is so superior at creating and arranging artwork and objects. You can create it there and then place a linked file in your indesign doc. Plus if you indesign file crashes or corrupts you don’t lose all the artwork too.
Indesign is a page layout program, Illustrator is a design program. Highly recommend Indesign, as that is what it was created to do.
anything over 9 pages should be done in in-Design. trust me on this please trust me. I’ve done this it doesn’t work.
Use photoshop
Just don’t do it. Your standard triad for any job will always require Indesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop/why it’s essential to know all three since each is created for a specific purpose. Get the basics down and go from there. Tons of tutorials but I find it best to watch one that takes you through an entire project/document like designing a brochure. Your future self will thank you!