Adobe InDesign Editor's Review

Adobe InDesign Creative Suite 5.5 is a world class application enabling the creation of flyers, posters, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. Its intended audience consists of graphic designers, production artists and those involved in professional publishing. 

The Adobe family of products is large and rich and InDesign integrates with its sibling InCopy, and also Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and others. 

InDesign will support you in the layout of top quality, complex documents with elegant typography. The core tool set enables the design of page layouts for digital distribution and printing. 

Version 5.5 contains dozens of new features such as: a new layers panel in layout design; variable page sizes in the same document; ‘span to’ facility to balance text across multiple pages; split data within a column into multiple columns; the facility to borrow content from linked files, via drag and drop; a fabulous gap tool, for interactive frame and gap placement; live corner effects; interactive workspace animation; the inclusion of interactive flash video inside the document; multistate objects on a page – all without the need to write code – and the option to export results as Flash or an interactive PDF. 

The product is free for a trial period. A full license costs around £600, plus VAT; subscription licenses are around £40 a month. It is available for both Mac and Windows environments. 

Pros: It offers almost unimaginable efficiencies in the production of well-designed books and documents; great documentation. 

Cons: Possibly cost and duration to proficiency. 

Conclusion: In the right hands InDesign CS5.5 is cool, beyond cool. It includes layout and design beyond print with dynamic eBooks and digital documents and helps designers share and receive feedback easily.