When growing up one of my most hated periodic chores was having to clean and organize my room. It’s not that I was extremely messy or unorganized, but over time the basic order deteriorated to chaos with the exception of the occasional sweeping of piles under the bed or into the closet. That’s probably why Ian Malcom’s (Jeff Goldblum) description of Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park made sense to me; I had seen it in action countless times. My room always descended into chaos.
So, what does all of this have to do with InDesign? Easy… while your mixture of windows and palettes may start out being arranged in some general order, in a matter of time they will most likely deteriorate into a haphazard mess that you are constantly sweeping under the bed.
After looking at the different options for setting up an InDesign document last week, it seems a natural progression to looking at the workspace of InDesign.
While there are countless variations in the set of palettes, windows, tools, etc. (I have no idea what etcetera is in this circumstance, but I’m afraid of leaving something out) that you can display within inDesign, learning the basics in how to place and use them is essential.
We’ll do a brief overview of the InDesign workspace, take a look at a couple of options for panel placement, and hone in on which essential panels to have within easy access. As a let’s-all-get-on-the-same-page step, I’ll just say upfront that this is not going to be exhaustive — mainly because I don’t want to be to blame for someone losing their job for getting lost down this rabbit hole. At a future date we can certainly take a deeper dive into specific elements, if there is interest.
The Workspace
Displayed above is the basic workspace for InDesign (don’t worry if your’s looks a little different). Obviously there’s a lot to take in at first glance, but much like your car, there are certain functions that you will probably never really use (I’m looking at you sunglass holder). Let’s go over a few of the key areas:
(A) — The top portion of the window is referred to as the Application Bar. If it isn’t showing for you, go up to your Menu and select Window>Application Bar. This gives you access to a few different items. In order Adobe Bridge (a digital asset manager), Adobe Stock Images, Page Magnification, View Options, Screen Mode, and Arrange Documents.
The most useful elements here are probably Page Magnification (which allows you to set the page magnification), the View Options (which allow you to easily turn the Ruler and Guides on and off), and the Screen Mode (Normal allows you to see frame edges, guides, etc. while Preview allows you to get a quick preview of your document without any frames, guides, hidden characters, etc.)
(B) — This area of the workspace allows you to change between presets for particular functions (Typography, Printing and Proofing, etc.) or to save your own workspace setup. You can also access these same options through the Top Menu under Window>Workspace. For now I would recommend selecting Essentials since that’s the base we will work from.
(C) — This is the Control portion of the window where you have access to some of the most often used fields. The nice thing about this is that it’s a contextual space, meaning that it can change depending on the tool you have selected. To see what this means, try selecting the Text Tool (Quick Key “T”). You’ll notice that the Control palette changes to reflect type adjustments instead of the options you see reflected above.
(D) — This is the Tool palette which contains assorted Selection tools, Drawing and Type tools, Transformation tools, and Modification and Navigation tools. You can either display the Tools anchored on the side in a single column (my preference), anchored on the side in a double column (click on the double arrow >> at the top of the Tool palette to see what that looks like), or floating loose (to see what that looks like move your mouse to the top of the Tool palette and then click-and-drag the palette elsewhere in the window. To anchor it to the side again click-and-drag the Tool palette back to the left of the window until you see a blue vertical line, then release the mouse.
(E) — This is the Panel Dock. Now, you can certainly have your panels sitting around willy-nilly in the workspace. You can also cross the streams when battling the StayPuff Marshmallow Man. Neither one is recommended. We’ll cover this a little later.
Panel Placement
After covering the basics of the workspace, let’s take a couple minutes to set up our space.
Start by selecting the Essentials workspace (go to the Top Menu and select Window>Workspace>Essentials). Once you’ve done that, let’s make sure we’re working from the same starting point and reset your workspace to the default Essentials space (go to the Top Menu and select Window>Workspace>Reset Essentials).
The basic setup of your workspace should look pretty close to the screenshot at the top of this post with one exception that we’ll take care of now. Personally, I don’t think having the CC Libraries open is that beneficial, so….
Go to the Top Menu, select Window>CC Libraries and deselect that option. Problem gone.
Essentially, you have three options for how you setup up your panels. You can let them roam free, you can dock them and collapse them to icons, or you can dock them and expand them.
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| Workspace — Roam Free | Workspace — Expand | Workspace — Collapse |
In my opinion, of the three options, the best is to dock them and collapse them to icons (Workspace — Collapse). The Workspace — Expand option looks useful, but with all the panels expanded open, you won’t be able to see and access them all, so it’s problematic. The less said about Workspace — Roam Free, the better.
The way you move from expanded panels to collapsed panels is by clicking on the two left-facing arrows at the top of the Panel Dock. Click it a few times to really get it out of your system. Then, leave it collapsed.
Now we’re going to learn how to move a panel to a different location.
Move your mouse over the Swatches panel, click and hold on the Swatches Panel name, and then drag it up just above the Stroke Panel name. Don’t go too far; only move it until you can see a blue line above the Stroke Panel name, then release the mouse. That should result in moving the Swatches Panel above the Stroke panel.
Next, move your mouse over the Stroke panel, click and hold your mouse, and move the Stroke panel just below the Color Panel. Be careful of moving it too far down or it will create a new section. There should be no line between Color and Stroke.
Once you have moving the panels down to a science, we’re going to move on to adding a NEW panel.
Go up to the Top Menu and select Window>Info. That will open up the Info Palette. Move your mouse over the top strip of the window, drag it over above the Pages panel in the Panel Dock, and then release the mouse.
Now for the fun part — when you have a particular panel that you want to use, simply click on that panel and it will expand out for you to access the fields available for that particular panel. Once you are finished with the panel, you can either click again on the panel name or click on the double right arrows and the panel will collapse back into the Panel Dock.
Panel Options
Very quickly we’re going to go over the contents of the Window category of the Top Menu.
(1) — This section allows you to Arrange the windows you have open or adjust your Workspace by selecting preset options or saving your own preset.
(2) — If you see an arrow to the right of a category, it simply means that there are additional options in that category (for example, the Color option in the menu contains Adobe Color Themes, Color, Gradient, and Swatches). This may be a bit of overkill, but I’m only satiating my need to be thorough. The same need that makes it virtually impossible for me to leave food on my plate.
(3) — A checkmark in front of a menu item indicates that the particular panel is already open.
(4) — The Tools panel should ALWAYS be selected. If it is not, then make sure to select it.
Essential Panels
Obviously, any list of “essential” panels is fairly subjective, but based on what may be used by a new or non-designer, this should be fairly complete.
Here is the list of the palettes and their locations. The graphic on the right should provide a decent suggestion of positioning for each panel.
We have already taken care of the first two sections in earlier steps.
Paragraph — Window>Type & Tables>Paragraph
Character — Window>Type & Tables>Character
Table — Window>Type & Tables>Table
Transform — Window>Object & Layout>Transform
Align — Window>Object & Layout>Align
Text Wrap — Window>Text Wrap
Effects — Window>Effects
You can place them in the Panel Dock in the configuration that I have listed to the right or configure them to your liking.
By using the Collapsed option for the Panel Dock, the palettes will stay out of your way, but are still easily accessible. Also, if for some reason you are using a particular palette for a period of time, you can drag it out of the dock to use as a floating palette. That can be helpful if you’re doing repetitive work and having the palette closer would be helpful.
So, now what? After all of that work, do you really want to repeat that work again? I didn’t think so.
We’re going to bring this all full circle. Once you have your space set up to your liking, go up to the Top Menu, select Window>Workspace>New Workspace and save your workspace under whatever name you like. For example, Dean’s Domain has a nice ring to it.
Now, no matter what changes you make to your InDesign space, no matter what chaos your InDesign environment descends into, you can return to your preferred setup with a couple of mouse clicks.
If there are any sections of this that you would like to see expanded, any portion of the workspace that you would like additional focus on, leave a comment and let us know.
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