InDesign is a publishing and editing software used to create posters, flyers and page layouts for media formats – such as magazines and newspapers. It is, in some circumstances, a more favourable application to use than Photoshop due to its array of specialised tools designed to with the purpose of more easily letting you create booklets with text and images.
Recently, I have spent some sessions familiarising myself with the software in order to create my own zines in the future.
First Impressions
While delving into InDesign for my first time, I created a rudimentary poster of a woodland landscape with some lorem ipsum (placeholder text). The process was fairly simple and involved the use of tools already seen in other pieces of software like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, both of which I am already familiar with. I merely had to use the Text Tool to create a box for my placeholder text and then insert the image from my files.
However, even if this was a quick and simple task I did encounter something that made the process a little tedious. Tools used to change to font sizes and colour were hidden away behind different menus and, sometimes, a pain to apply. While it was by no means a massive issue, it did seem less intuitive to PowerPoint – at least when making use of these types of features.
Future Zine
After dipping my toes into the software, I began outlining a plan to create a more fledged out zine in the future. Since the zine format consists of a combination of images and text, I decided that I was going to make a booklet containing the character profiles I had made for my previous projects thus far. That way I could combine the drawings I had created for a number of presentations and pitches with snippets of information about these characters that I had created.
The original plan was to include a page for nine different characters but due to the amount of space I would be working with and the information I would need to include, I condensed this list down to my three most favourite: Andrew and Rose from my comic book and Vic from my audiobook.
From there I began collecting an array of colour schemes I might make use of and some reference images for how I want the zine to be visually presented.
Potential Colour Schemes:
References:
For the cover I imagined a multi-faced vase like this, as to represent the multiple character profiles. 
This dark aesthetic that I have been using for my blog, as well as the previous zines I have created, is something that I wanted to use here again. 
This dark aesthetic that I have been using for my blog, as well as the previous zines I have created, is something that I wanted to use here again. 
This dark aesthetic that I have been using for my blog, as well as the previous zines I have created, is something that I wanted to use here again.
Posters
s a part of some character analysis work I did and preparation for the final zine, I created another simple poster which, this time, included a profile on Ellen Ripley – the protagonist of the mainline Alien films – in InDesign.
Working on this poster in the software was, overall, a rather finicky experience. I found myself once again irritated by InDesign’s tedious layout and the – sometimes – convoluted methods of completing certain tasks (like adjusting the layout of images) that in other programs would have been relatively simple. I was constantly resisting the urge to turn to other applications, like Procreate, that feel far more user friendly thanks to their intuitive menu design.
Though that being said, I did still appreciate the sheer amount of tools at my disposal, even if they were a bit of a pain to navigate. InDesign’s inbuilt feature that allows you to order a number of pages layouts into a cohesive booklet is useful too, but in this situation – where I am making a single poster – it didn’t particularly aid the process.
Final Product
Creating my final was more of the same. I encountered some trouble formatting pictures correctly and felt constricted while trying to edit the layout of my pages. However, while frustrating I was experienced enough with the software to work around these obstacles – though, these work-arounds were still a bit time consuming.
In the end, I decided to go with a grey and black colour scheme for the majority of images I included. While these colours are simple and I had already used them making my zine for my Cathartic Process Final piece, I felt that they were still suitable for this booklet and the characters profiles inside (Andrew and Rose) come from a script with an emphasis on gothic themes.
Behind my sketches of the characters I decided to include images that didn’t necessarily fit with the rest of the layout, but were instead pertinent to a specific character’s backstory. Giving each profile, hopefully, more flavour.
Speaking of, when integrating the text from their biographies I struggled to slim down the text in order for them to fit onto the page. Meaning I had to rewrite sections of their profile to better summarise my original points. It was a little tricky as the text was already written to be brief, but like the rest of the issues I encountered I eventually managed.
Afterthoughts
While I was satisfied with the outcome of my final zine and could appreciate the tools InDesign offers, I continuously found myself wanting to switch to the other programs to complete my work. I do recognise however, that this may be the result of an ingrained bias created from already spending time acclimatising to these other applications and that my experience with InDesign was made all the more jarring because of it. Which – in tandem with the software’s page layout tools – I would be willing to keep trying to familiarise myself with the tools so that I can create more zines in the future.
Witchers and Witches 