Hybrid Working for Collaborative Design
Posted by Website Director on Oct. 16, 2023 / Blog / Subscribe 0
Much like our genetic makeup, we are all unique and work in a variety of workflows, speeds, and styles. Depending on the size of your firm, the number of cooks in the kitchen is probably limited. This has always been a great method of job security for marketers in AEC because if no one can understand how you file everything, they will always need you to figure that out! But what happens when you’re no longer a sole practitioner within Marketing? You must figure out how to collaborate with different members with varying skill sets from the initial kickoff through the final submission and interview. This is where consistency and communication will drive you to greater success.
I’ve been a part of a team of all sizes. I have been a sole practitioner, a member of a small team, and a member of a larger team. Each has its own struggles and strengths, but one thing that I have found would benefit a team of any size is preparing your workspace for collaborative design.
We’ve all been there: we’re working on a tight deadline that’s rapidly approaching and you need assistance with pulling resumes and formatting them to match the style of your document. A member of your staff did just that and sent you the InDesign files to incorporate into your document. When you attempt to include them, all the fonts shift, elements of the design jump, and all the stress finds its way to your jaw. There are now competing styles in your document, and a whole new headache.
Paragraph Styles and Character Styles are one of the most powerful functions of InDesign. They allow for consistent formatting throughout an entire document, no matter the length. In this demonstration, we will cover the following:
- Setting up your personalized workspace;
- Building a succinct Paragraph and Character Style library with clear naming terminology; and
- How to share the library across your team.
Setting Up Your Personalized Workspace
The following instructions require opening InDesign but you cannot have a document open in InDesign. We are setting up universal settings, if you were to have a document open, it would only apply the settings to that document.
InDesign will first open in a pre-defined Workspace. There are a handful of workspaces that are built into InDesign that you may be familiar with: Advanced, Book, Digital Publishing, Essentials, etc. (See Figure 1). These are presets that define the layout of your workspace’s menu panels. Rather than using one of the presets, we will customize our own with the menus we use the most.
Figure 1. InDesign Workspace Menu
Step One. The first step is to open all the menu panels that you want in your workspace. This is the first area where you can customize which menus you use most and organize them in a way that suits your workflow. I like to organize mine in a hierarchy starting with the most general and working down to the most specific, which you can see in Figure 2. (To add a new panel, select Window from the top menu bar and select the panel you want to add. Once selected, you may need to nest it within the panel on the right. To do so, drag the panel into the nested panel on the right and look for a thick blue line. Once the line is showing, release your mouse and the panel will nest where the line was.)
Figure 2. My Customized InDesign Panel Menu
Step Two. Once you have your panels all organized how you like them, look to the top of the InDesign menu directly to the right of the blue Share button. Click the down arrow to expand the menu and select “New Workspace.” A new window will pop up asking you to name your New Workspace (I often just use my name) – make sure both “Panel Locations” and “Menu Customization” are checked and select [OK]. You’ll now see the name of your workspace next to the Share button (Figure 3). This is your established workspace. Should you want to adjust any of the panels or menus, make the adjustments, and save over your custom Workspace.
Figure 3. Workspace List with Your Newly Created Personalized Workspace
Building a Succinct Paragraph and Character Style Library
Having a handful of styles to select from will make formatting any document so much easier! Think if you want to change the font size to all the body text throughout the entire document, you can do that with one style update that can be applied universally. For now, I will focus on how I organize my styles rather than go into detail on how to make a paragraph or character style; however, this guide can assist with that.
After you have a few styles created, you’ll see the styles panel start to populate (Figure 4). Quickly, you’ll realize that you want a lot of different styles to do different functions. Maybe you need multiple header styles, specific fonts for captions, or you want a line or rule accompanying the text – these are all achieved through styles. Keeping yourself organized in InDesign is always a good practice, and that continues with styles.
Figure 4. Starting to Build a Paragraph Style Library
I organize my styles by type. In Figure 5 you can see I have multiple headers under “Headings” as well as many options under “Text Formatting Styles.” I can easily add to these lists as I continue to find a need for more styles.
Figure 5. Sample Paragraph Style Library, Separated by Section
Pro Tip: You can do this same treatment to your Swatches to build out your branding colors, or other commonly used colors.
Sharing your Style Library Across Your Team
Now that your library is set, let’s work on sharing it with your team. First, you will need to open a new document and save it someplace where your entire team can access it. Then you will work with the individuals to open and load the styles.
Step One. Create a new InDesign file.
Step Two. Open your Paragraph Styles panel and ensure your styles are loaded (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Sample Customized Workspace with Built-in Paragraph Styles
Step Three. File > Save As… -- I call this file “Styles and Swatches.indd” and save all my styles and swatches into a clean InDesign file.
Step Four. Have your teammate open InDesign on their computer but do not open a document yet. Navigate to the Paragraph Styles tab and hit the three lines (at the top-right of the panel) to open the flyout menu (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Using the Flyout Menu to Load Paragraph Styles
Step Five. Select “Load All Paragraph Styles…” from the menu. A popup window will appear asking you to select a file. Choose the “Styles and Swatches.indd” file and hit [Open].
Step Six. In the Load Styles popup window, select “Check All” (which will check off each box for every style within the Styles and Swatches document) and hit [OK] (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Load Styles Popup Window
Step 7. Open your Paragraph Styles panel to confirm all paragraph styles are loaded (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Confirm Paragraph Styles are Saved to Your Workspace
Step 8. Now you will want to re-save your Workspace to save the Styles Library to your personalized workspace. To do this you’ll go back to the Workspace menu and select “New Workspace” and save it over the workspace we created in the first part of this tutorial.
That’s it! Now the preformatted paragraph styles and character styles are embedded into your workspace. Repeat this on each of your teammate’s computers and enjoy the seamless handoff! Because all users are working within the same styles, they should remain the same from computer to computer, even with the customized workspaces.
Remember, libraries like these need periodic attention. When you want to change a style, you will need to update your styles in the Styles and Swatches file, save the file, and then have your team reload them to their workspace to keep everyone synced.
Steven Alvarez
Marketing Specialist, Stantec
Director of Chapter Relations, SMPS Philadelphia
Steven Alvarez is a Marketing Specialist at Stantec working remotely with the North Central Marketing Team. After 8 years of developing events and sales plans for for-profit and non-profit art spaces, he translated that experience into marketing roles within the AEC industry. In an effort to learn more about the industry and proposal processes, Steven has been attending SMPS Philadelphia events since 2016 and officially became a member via the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Membership Grant and joined the DEI Committee. Last year he served as SMPS Philly's Associate Director of DEI and this year he is serving on the Board of Directors as Chapter Relations Director. Steven resides in South Jersey with his husband, Shamus, and their two rescue pups, Waldorf and Statler.
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