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I've been doing my own research and found an option that seems to work okay. It gives the writer an imperfect but near-accurate version of the layout to work in, and takes almost no time away from real work to produce it. It's based on turning a PDF into a Word doc... the very idea of which makes me feel unclean... but it seems to work, and the copywriter I ...

Sooner or later, a company logo will need to be reproduced in just one solid colour/channel, where even halftoning or greyscale aren't achievable. You'd normally use a special variant of the logo for these purposes of course, but you need to consider how the underlying design will adapt. Will it still be recognisable? Perhaps not if effects, or even ...

Historically, issues would be: reproducibility: Can it be faxed, photocopied, mimeographed, shown on 480TV, etc? resizability: can the logo be increased/decreased in size and still look good? cost: can the logo be reproduced with 4 color or spot printing without breaking the budget file complexity: can the RIP software process the file to begin with? can ...

Great question. The answer depends partly on the context, and won't be the same for every job, but here are some general guidelines. In some situations, there will be someone actually wearing the copy editing hat, and you can refer problem passages to that person. In most settings that's not the case, so the designer either edits the copy or adjusts the ...

I always use tabs with an underline leader. The method of creating lines, then anchoring them in text makes for sloppy editing later. And using repeated underscores doesn't allow for proper alignment. Another option, depending upon desired design, is to use Paragraph Rules: If I want anything containing more rules than these two methods I move to ...

Just my opinion.... Sometimes. I work with many clients. Several of my clients utilize copywriters. When a copywriter hands me (or the client) text, I treat that text and written in stone. No change will be made to the text without first consulting the writer. If, for no other reason, this is done as a professional courtesy to allow the writer to control ...

I recently ran into this exact issue with a client, and it took great effort to convince the client and another designer against it. Basically, we were engaging in a brand development project for a client whom we were also building a website for. Very early on, the other designer suggested a "neon sign" look. The client loved the idea and latched onto it. ...

It is a BAD habit to not rename your layers. Regardless of whether they're simple or complex, grouped or solitary, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera - you should always name your layers! When you need to get something done quickly, there are few things more annoying than opening a PSD or AI file with dozens of unnamed layers and objects. When this happens, ...

To bring it down to the simplest statement: Avoid any treatment that requires transparency effects (including use of blend modes, drop shadows, etc.), gradients or textures in the basic design of the logo, wordmark or logotype. Use solid colors. Be sure it works reversed out of a dark field as well as on a light field. Once you have that basic shape and ...

What you need is an InCopy with InDesign workflow. InCopy does exactly what you require (and is made for exactly this task). There is nothing else out there, frankly, that doesn't involve klugy workarounds. With InCopy, your copy editors and writers work with the exact layout, they can see exactly how the copy flows and where it will overset, but they can't ...

Yes, more than one designer can work together. Can more than one designer working together produce a better design solution than individuals working on their own? Hard to say. It really depends on a number of things. In my experience, when you get the right group of designers together, things can be much more productive as a group. It requires a certain ...

You should be using I most often see use of the line tool in InDesign for form field lines. Adding lines in-line with text works fine. This method allows you to quickly convert your PDF output file to a fill-in form since Adobe Live Cycle can read these lined areas as fields.

Couple of quick observations to add to the very thorough preceding answers. We can all agree that form does follow function. However, where that line falls can be very ambiguous. I've worked for clients where the form was the function. Achieving visual, emotional effect is sometimes the primary end. Not everything is a novel, instruction manual, or text ...

In addition, one could use Character styles with underline option turned on. For instance "Body" paragraph styled text might be converted with additional "Overline" character style, which has an offset underline and well positioned tabs (see example image). Like in Scott's answer, for simple forms, tables are not necessary needed.

Depends what you mean by "wireframe." If you want a detailed sketch to show functionality without actually coding, I found Wireframe Sketcher to be a useful intermediate step between "mockup in Adobe product" and "finished CSS/HTML." If you want a website which actually works, but doesn't have the images, content, or bells and whistles, then just code it ...

These days, once a wireframe is established I simply use BBEdit and a browser to build the framework. Image applications - Photoshop, Illustrator, et. al. - are used to create individual elements but it has become increasingly rare to build out an entire page in painting/drawing application and then slice it up. It's far more efficient to simply code in ...

You need a good Creative Director to keep everything working together. That CD might be one of the designers on the project or an overseer one step removed from the execution. It is possible to work successfully as collaborators without a "head", but rare. You need a team that has an excellent understanding of each other's approach and the common goals for ...