Collaboration in InDesign

Collaborate with Other Designers Teamwork and workgroup-based creativity is common among larger publications. Collaborating efficiently is crucial but rare—until now.
Master It Working alone or together with colleagues, create or convert a pre-existing, multi-page document into a candidate for the Placed Page Collaboration Workflow. Assign content to coworkers, and have them design or alter the existing design of their portions of the publication and deliver their respective INDD documents back to you so that you may update and finalize the overall publication.
Solution Learners should apportion a multi-page document such that one or more separate pages are assigned to each member of the learner’s workgroup. Content on those pages should be removed to separate InDesign documents and then placed back into the original locations as placed and linked INDD documents. The other members of the workgroup should edit their assignments and return the art to the team leader working with the core document. The leader will then update linked assets to bring the document current. Watch out for pages with duplicated content, which indicates that the learner forgot to delete the original objects from the core document subsequent to generating the assigned component documents.
Collaborate with Writers and Editors It’s a control thing, man. Laying out the page is the domain of the designer; editing the copy is the realm ruled by editors. Neither group wants governorship of either material forced upon (or even really given to) the other group. Thankfully, with InCopy, Adobe’s best-kept secret, there’s no longer a need for either editorial or design to give up its control, freedom, or field of view.
Master It Open or create a layout containing at least two separate stories. Create assignments for two collaborators, assigning at least one story to each, and then generate and email an InCopy package for each assignment to its assignee. If your collaborators have InCopy CS3 on hand, have them edit the stories and return them to you as InDesign packages. Finally, update the content in the layout from those packages.
Solution If learners do not have access to InCopy or coworkers with InCopy, forgo the second part of the exercise. In the first part, the result should be an Assignments panel that lists two assignments with at least one content item each. Both assignments should display the purple gift box icon denoting that they’ve successfully been packaged. Also check File>User to ensure that the learner correctly identified himself to InDesign, per the instructions in this chapter.
Share Reusable Settings They say the definition of the word insane is doing something over and over while expecting different results. I agree with that definition, but I would like to propose my own addendum: doing the same thing over and over when there’s no reason to do it more than once is also insane. In this thing we do, there is more than enough insanity thrust upon us by deadlines, clients, limited budgets, malfunctioning software, temperamental RIPs, and so many other sources; we must do what we can to salvage our own peace of mind and maintain productivity. Save a brain cell; share a setting.
Master It Examine your work, the typical documents you create and contribute to, the styles, swatches, and other reusable settings you use at least once a month. Save them all. Put them on a USB flash memory stick or email them home to yourself. Then, send them to your coworkers or lab partners, and ask for their reusable settings in return. Each of you should then load pieces you’ve exchanged into your respective versions of InDesign. It’s time to collaborate efficiently. Solution Given that each learner will likely opt to save and share different types of reusable settings, there is no check against their progress other than that something was transferred between the InDesign users and successfully loaded into their copies of InDesign.