Long Document Design

The Goals

The objective of this assignment is to learn InDesign tools which allow you to format long documents. We want to take the intimidation factor out of building long documents. We need to get to the point where the number of pages doesn't matter anymore. We need to look at the document's text hierarchy rather than the length of its content. Rather than building this document one page at a time or one paragraph at a time, we'll pour the text into a threaded document, then we'll style it.

This assignment is to build a document based on a provided model. We need to adhere to the appearance of the model as much as possible, though some small differences will creep into our document.

The Skills

These are the InDesign functions we're going to use to build the Canfor Annual Report document:

Other functions include Keep Options, composition settings, baseline alignment, etc…

The Devil's in the Details

• Your document cannot have two consecutive carriage returns.
• Your document cannot have two consecutive space characters.
• All Tab spaces must be defined. Never have more than one tab character at a time.
• All text must be associated to a Style Sheet.
• Paragraph and Character Styles must be used in the proper circumstances.
• You must use all the copy provided.
• You must not have any other fonts than the ones that print.

The Stages of the Game

This is how we're going to build this document:

Week one: Flow the text into the document.

During our first class, we'll set up the document. We'll flow the text on pages based on Masters. We'll set the margins, type, master elements. You'll flow the text and format it only for the basic hierarchy. By the end of this stage, we'll have a document with only one font family. It'll have headers with style sheets applied.

Week two: Create all the tables

You may have noticed that the tables have been removed from the original text. They'll be designed as a separate operation, using Table Styles. We'll put them all in place before moving to the next stage.

Week three: T.O.C., footnotes & more

We'll add all the finishing touches to the document. InDesign has tools to build dynamic tables of contents and footnotes. These will come into play to finish up the document. We'll also add the cover to the document.

How to Get an "A"

You'll perform a Package function on your Cover document as well as on your main document. Name both of these as shown above. Put them both in one folder named your name and group number.

Proper use of the software skills listed above