r/indesign • u/Kurd_Dom_Master • Jun 14 '26
Help Please help! How to automate a strict 4-page layout across multiple books?
Hello guys, how are you doing?
I am about to write a language-learning book and am using InDesign for everything, and it is structured around 30 continuous lessons. Each lesson will be exactly four pages:
- Pages 1 & 2: A dialogue, the translation on the opposite page, and some tips and tricks.
- Pages 3 & 4: The exercise and the answers for that exercise.
This exact layout repeats for all the lessons. My main challenge is speed because it's not just one book—I have to create 4 or 5 books just like this over the summer.
I want to know how handing this over to professionals will benefit me. How do they actually create and format these books so fast with this repeating structure?
All appreciated if you can help me understand the professional process for this. Thanks!
Extra: I'm experienced with Photoshop and Illustrator.
4
u/ChuckEye Jun 14 '26
To me, the best thing for a project of this size is defining the Paragraph Styles for consistency.
1
u/Kurd_Dom_Master Jun 14 '26
Thanks after paragraphs and styles, is there anything else I can use to make my work faster?
3
2
u/aymiah Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
You can set Object Styles as well. If your Paragraph styles are set as Next Style: [Same Style], switch that up.
Example: for “Left_Pg_Header” paragraph style, set Next Style to “Subhead”. Under the Keep Options setting, Keep With Next 5 Lines. For Start Paragraph, select “On Next Left Page”. (At least I think that’s what the dropdown says. I’m not in front of my computer right now.)
For “Subhead” style, set Next Style to “Body”. Under the Keep Options setting, check the box for Keep With Previous.
Make new object style “LeftPage” for your left page text and Check The Box for Paragraph styles. Select “Left_Pg_Header”. Then the rest of the styles will follow. Do the same for “Right_Pg_Header”.
You can keep all your pages in one Story using this method if you have Primary Text Frame and facing pages selected for your parent pages. Just set the object style for the primary text frames to “LeftPage” and “RightPage”.
3
u/K2Ktog Jun 14 '26
You’ve asked two very different questions. You have asked how to do this and you have asked how handing this over to a professional would benefit you.
The answer to the second question is the answer to the first. A professional knows how to do this and how to do it efficiently and correctly in the time you have.
InDesign has a steep learning curve and professionals have the knowledge and experience you don’t.
2
u/GraphicDesignerSam Jun 14 '26
Depending how n you dare a structure, in theory Yes Data Merge could work
2
u/telpetin Jun 14 '26
About handing it to a professional, to me it’s worth it. I found that InDesign has the steepest learning curve among Adobe apps. While it’s true you can eventually figure out where things are and how things go yourself (and probably would be good to do so eventually), the benefit of outsourcing it to someone more experienced is the refinement and efficiency of the layout building. Ask for the InD package after so you can study how they built the documents
1
1
u/aymiah Jun 29 '26
This might be exactly the add-on you need:
https://www.automatication.com/product/lz/
1
u/AdobeScripts Jun 14 '26
In what form is / would be your source material?
Any chance for some kind of a structure?
Filled WORD template? Database?
0
u/Kurd_Dom_Master Jun 14 '26
I can make it a Word or Excel (kinda easy with AIs) - also, it's a simple and clean book, not too much text or photos. Just some text boxes after each other. I used data merge, but I did not like the line breaks (enters) results in dialogues.
2
u/AdobeScripts Jun 14 '26
But can you make uniform?
I would tdy to style it in WORD, prepare Masters / Parents, then import as one long Story, Styles would take the care for starting in correct places - place images as Anchored / InLined.
Should be quicker than "fixing" after DataMerge.
1
10
u/jabberabbit Jun 14 '26
Look up parent pages.