Difficult to master, but worth the investment!
November 12, 2019
Difficult to master, but worth the investment!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe InDesign
I have used Adobe InDesign as a member of the marketing department. Myself and a senior designer had access to Adobe InDesign to create content for marketing campaigns and for our website. While Adobe Illustrator works well for creating graphics and banners, Adobe InDesign helped us to create marketing collateral with a page layout like eBooks, whitepapers, and flyers. It helped us to create content that explained the benefits of our products to customers and ultimately, assisted in generating leads and making sales.
- Adobe is great for creating content like eBooks and whitepapers. Many people use simpler applications like Microsoft Word for creating these types of documents, but Adobe provides more flexibility in layout which helps you to make more engaging content. The platform is more responsive to vector files - enabling you to change image colors. Also, text boxes and images can be placed anywhere on the page rather than having to follow a cursor for placement like one would have to when using Microsoft Word. It seems like the platform was built for creating more engaging content with a variety of imagery and text on every page.
- One of my favorite features on Adobe is the option to create color themes. Most companies I've worked for have had brand guidelines that must be followed when creating content. One of the most important guidelines are the brand colors. With Adobe, I can save the company's brand colors as a color theme to make sure that every time I open the application, our brand colors are stored. This shortens the amount of time it takes to start a project and enables me to select, deselect, and change colors to see which brand color works best.
- I love the "Layers" feature on Adobe InDesign. When working on other platforms, I always have to go to the images or text boxes on the page and select "bring forward" or "move backward" to make sure everything is displayed properly. For example, if I want white text on top of a blue shape, the blue shape may come forward and the text will be under the blue shape. This never happens in Adobe InDesign because you can separate your text and images into layers. In most cases, since text is supposed to be read, the text should be on top of all images and shapes. In Adobe InDesign, I can group every text box into a layer that always stays on top of the shapes and images.
- The biggest issue that I think hinders people from using Adobe InDesign is how overwhelming it is to get started. The interface is not intuitive and doesn't mimic the layout of any similar application. Because of that, it can be difficult to adopt if your company's employees have not already had experience using it. In my case, I had been introduced to InDesign as an intern and later accepted a full-time role on a team where I was able to improve to an intermediate level because our senior digital designer (an InDesign expert) was there to support me as I used InDesign for content creation. In my opinion, this is a rare opportunity where a company already has an expert available. Having such a difficult learning curve to overcome also seems to impact employee workload. Since it takes a while for employees to understand how to use the platform, creating content using this application is often tacked onto one or to people who understand how to use it - making the person(s) feel overwhelmed.
- Adobe has been great for creating content quickly that can be used for generating revenue. Because we can easily create and publish our own presentations, booklets, etc., the sales team always has the content they need for every prospective customer they speak to. We have created the content that helped us gain major clients using Adobe InDesign. It always looks very clean and professional.
- Having Adobe has also helped us cut costs when using print services for marketing campaigns, sponsorship, etc. For example, when I use a printing vendor to get hard copies of our catalogs, print banners, etc., we always have the designs and file formats needed for a direct print. Other companies who do not have their own applications like InDesign are often charged additional fees for designing, converting documents, etc.
- Adobe InDesign has played a part in not only making sales, but also up-selling and cross-selling our current customers. We have created documents using InDesign to explain how one of our products is best utilized in conjunction with another. The application has so many options from graphics to tables that we can implement to explain those benefits in a clear, engaging way.
Aside from Adobe InDesign, I have used Microsoft Word. I have also used Canva, which I see is an alternative that some marketers use. Word does not have the same capabilities regarding graphics that Adobe InDesign has. Your document would be far more engaging using InDesign because it can handle more graphics and gives you more freedom in placement. Canva is a great application, but I would not recommend it for page-like layouts. The features on Canva - especially the exporting options - seem to be more focused on social media use. I would only use Canva for B2C companies who create most of their content for social media like Instagram.
Do you think Adobe InDesign delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Adobe InDesign's feature set?
Yes
Did Adobe InDesign live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Adobe InDesign go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Adobe InDesign again?
Yes