Item: Adobe InDesign
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe InDesign

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a non-profit, we use it to design a lot of materials, from our student booklets to pamphlets, posters, instructional materials, etc. We all use it at our organization, but I am a documentation lead, which means I usually take our organization's ideas and then create drafts/ideas in InDesign and then get feedback from others and make edits as needed. I also help train others in our organization on how to use it.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ability to create professional media
Has a lot of online resources to learn how to use it
Fairly easy to use (but a large learning curve)
Great tools/options

Cons

Inserting tables is not super easy or intuitive: I feel like something that basic should be better
Panels of all different options of tools, tabs, etc could be organized better
Large learning curve for the general population: hard for people who are only used to Microsoft products to make the transition
Expensive to get adobe suite. I'd love to have it personally and recommend it to more people, especially in the education world- but many can't afford in their budgets.

Return on Investment

Professional: bringing us to the next level of how the items we use everyday look.
Building a skill set of our team in graphic design areas.
Given us more opportunities in the curriculum development to make items to use in our classrooms that we couldn't have otherwise.

Usability

Once you get used to it, it is great. As I said, the transition from other products is a little hard and I don't love that, for example, some of the tools in InDesign is different than in Illustrator (both Adobe products). I think there are some tools and things that are not extremely intuitive and it is a little harder for the general public to use. People without a lot of experience in this area are often intimidated/very lost with this software I've found and are resilient to start using it.

Support Rating

I like the tutorials I've found on their website, but honestly, a lot of YouTube videos made by those, not from Adobe are almost better. There could be more support within the product itself.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Photoshop, Google Drive and Microsoft 365 Business

I have used the Microsoft Suites (Publisher, Word, etc), those on Google Drive, the Apple Pages, etc., but I definitely like Adobe InDesign the best. I have also used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but out of those 3, InDesign, I think, is the easiest to use.

Other Software Used

Google Drive, Google Forms, Adobe Premiere Pro, Microsoft 365 Business, Lenovo LanSchool, Dropbox, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Acrobat DC, PTC Creo, Tinkercad, Skype, Zoom

Likelihood to Recommend

It is great for designing anything where you need to make something look professional and as a layout-posters, handouts, booklets, using high-quality media, export as a pdf, etc. It is less appropriate if wanting to do a write up to quick share with others, take notes, or more informal documents.

Comments

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