Adjusting Your Workspace For Maximum Amazingness

Hi there, welcome to the Workspace video. We're going to start with just some housekeeping to make sure we're all on the same page. Then we're going to move into some more advanced workspace features. So hang around for that, there's some gems in there.

To start with, we're going to make sure we've got our units and increments all the same. And you do it up here. On a Mac, it's under 'InDesign CC', 'Preferences', and go to 'Units'. If you're on a PC, it's under 'Edit', and down the bottom here, 'Preferences', and 'Units'. The other thing to note, if you're changing your default units from say millimeters, or picas, or inches, and you need to do it with no files open. If I have the file open and do it, it will change just for that document and as soon as I close it down, and open up a new document, you go back to the default, and that can be really annoying.

So nothing open, and let's go to our 'Units & Increments'. Now depending on where you are in the world, you might be on picas, it's an old school style from newspaper days. I never used picas, so I'm always switching mine to millimeters because I'm in Europe most of the time, but if I've got clients in US, I'm switching it to inches. We're going to use inches for this course just because most of the people watching these videos are based in US. So that's all you need to do. Click 'OK'. We never change the Stroke, it's always done in Points. So we're going to click 'OK'. Now that will change the default forever.

The other thing I'd like you to do, is if we go to 'File', 'Open', I'd like you to go to 'Exercise Files', and in '01 Spring Flyer'-- if you haven't downloaded the exercise files there's a link on the page here somewhere. I want you to open up the 'indd' file, the '01 Spring Flyer'. If you're using an older version of InDesign, and playing along, a lot of that stuff will still work but you might have to use the 'idml' file. This will allow all the versions of InDesign, pre CC2018 to open them up, and work fine. If you're in CC2018 or above just use the indd files. Let's click 'Open'. Now first thing is, I'm going to go to up the top here. This is going to change my workspace. So I'm going to make sure the tick is on 'Essentials' and I'm going to click 'Reset Essentials'. That means everyone's going to look the same.

The other thing I'm going to do is, see this little pop-up menu here? This little Chevrons. I'm going to pop mine out, and have this open for the entire class. It's up to you, it doesn't matter but that's the way I'm going to work through this course. If you're on a PC, I'm pretty sure it's up here on the left. If you can't find it, the exact same thing is here. 'Window', 'Workspace', and you can see here, 'Essentials', same thing. So that's the boring housekeeping stuff out of the way. Let's look at some more advanced workspace features. And it's to do with this Pasteboard area here. This kind of lighter gray in the background. Now a lot of people, me included, I like to kind of copy things, move it over here and start working on alternate layouts. But there's not a lot of room in here, watch this. If I start making a couple of versions and if I start dragging it up, there's just no room there, there's definitely no room at the top. By default, only gives you a tiny Pasteboard area. If you're like me, and in Illustrator, and has a ginomous Pasteboard area, you’re not doing lots of work, kind of all over the place. So we can adjust that here in InDesign as well.

Now there's two ways to do it, per document. If I got this document open, I can say, just this document, 'Preferences', go to 'Guides & Pasteboard'. And down the bottom here is where the defaults are. So, mine is 8.5"x1". It's got this 18", and over here, by maybe 5". Click 'OK'. You'll see, it has a much bigger Pasteboard area. Some people love a big Pasteboard area, some people don't. One of the other things though, if you make it really, really big, say it is 15" on the vertical, if you have another page, they're actually quite physically far apart. It's not a big deal, but that's just something to be considered. Now though, if I open up a new document, any random document, you'll notice, my Pasteboard area is back to the teeny tiny size. To get around that, have nothing open, I'm going to close both of these back up. Close, close… and have nothing open, and if I change my settings now, it will change forever. So you can go in here, change it up to a bigger size. I'll leave mine as default, just to match my students' when they come into class. So we're going to leave that there.

Before we get out of here though, I'd like to show you, under 'General', this thing here, 'Show "Start" Workspace', this is the new workspace in 2018 where it kind of shows you the documents you've been working on. Some people don't like that, they don't want to see all the panels like it was before. You can just turn that off there, click 'OK'. And it means, when it starts up, it goes to this view. But that's totally up to you, it annoys lots of people. Under 'Preferences' again, we're going to go to-- I'm going to turn that back on. I've grown to like it, but I know a lot of people don't.

One of the other things people don't like working with is Interface. Over here, you can click through, and just change it back to old school InDesign. Up to you. I'm going to go to this default here of this Medium Dark. Let's click 'OK'.

Next thing we can do to make your starting a job a lot smoother and a lot faster is to adjust the default pages because whenever you go to 'file', 'New', 'Document', you've got 'Print', and you've got some defaults. So US Letter has defaults but there might be things in here, like you might always be using two columns and the margins, you might be changing. So you might have things you do every single time, and you're like "Man, every time I have to do that." So what you can do, to change this by default, is go to 'Close', 'File', come down to 'Document Presets', and click on 'Define'. We're going to double click the 'Default'. And I'm going to be working under 'Print', and pick your 'Page Size'. You might be A4 or Letter, whatever you want to adjust. And in here, you might be saying, I'm using Landscape all the time. Nobody is using Landscape the whole time but down here as well, 'Columns', I want two columns and I want to 'Gutter' that, so it's kind of nice and full, like that.

What I tend to do as well, is 'Margins', I break this little link here so that, down the bottom I always have like a thicker piece down the bottom of my margins. Contains the page numbering and the document title. Say you're always working, and you need to have your Bleed, you could type in '0.125'. Cool thing about that now, is if I click 'OK', and when I go to a new document, and I pick 'Print' US Letter now, you can see down here, I've got two columns. My Margins are set, 1" there, and my Bleed is all set for me. You might have two versions, okay? And you can have more than one, under 'File', 'File Definitions', and you can click on 'Define', and you can just create your own. So you might create a new one, you can call this 'Letter Alternative1', or 'Letter for specific client'. And it will appear in your new documents. You might be in charge of a larger studio, and you can grab your default, and save it. Save it on to the network drive and people can come into the same option, and load it in. So you've got some consistency across documents. Before we go out, I'm going to edit mine, and put it back to normal. So I'm going to go change this, and we'll cut this up, and I'll see you in a sec.

One last thing to make your life a little easier in InDesign is the Pages panel. So let's open up any old document, I'll open up my 'Spring Flyer' again. In my Pages panel here I'm actually going to push that all out so I can see everything, and in the Burger menu in the top here you'll notice, if I actually add a bunch of new pages they kind of stack vertically, and that's fine, but you'll be lot more better in use of space if they're kind of stacked side by side. You can do that easily under the Burger menu, then go to 'View Pages', and go to 'Horizontally'. It just means they stack side by side. Especially if you've got a nice big screen, you can have this up and you can see, you can have actually quite a few on the screen at one time rather than have to scroll up and down.

The other nice thing you can do is you can go to the Flat menu here and you can go to the 'Panel options', and these here now are quite small. You can adjust them, to say Large or Extra Large depending on your preference. There's Jumbo as well. Just makes some of the details a little easier to know which page to jump into. One thing though, if I go to 'Essentials', and 'Reset Essentials', it's going to remove that. It will stay for all the new documents now, but if you ever reset it, it will go back to default. You can get around that by going into here, and just creating your own new workspace. I'm going to call mine 'Dan'. It just means that, it's going to look like this, and if I need to reset it, I can go to 'Reset Dan' and it's going to stay the same.

So I hope you found some useful paths in getting set up. I know that's boring, you came for some more exciting advanced InDesign. Let's move on to the next video now. Bring on the fonts.