A Fireside Chat with Erica Gamet and Jonathan Levit

Sit by the fire and ask the experts all those burning questions that have dogged you for years.

Location and Parking

The meeting is being held in the Fireside Room in the Campus Center Building. You can park free in the parking structure. There is only one parking structure on campus. The campus is bordered on the north by Oxnard Street. Enter the campus from the Oxnard and Ethel Street entrance. You will be going south and the parking structure is on your right. You can park free on the second, third or fourth floors of the parking structure. Do not park on the first floor. The Campus Center Building is southwest of the parking structure.

Meeting Notes

By Alvin Takamori

On Thursday evening of May 18, in a continuing effort to spread knowledge about InDesign across the county, the Los Angeles InDesign User Group held a meeting at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys. It was a prelude to a special full day workshop the following day. The guest presenters, Erica Gamet—in L.A. from Colorado—and Jonathan Levit, were eager to share their expertise gathered from over two and a half decades in the graphics industry.

Erica brought a digital fireplace video befitting the advertised informal fireside chat atmosphere of the meeting. They began by touching briefly upon their personal backgrounds. Jonathan started out as a college student teaching Pagemaker to high school newspaper staffs. Erica began in production at a print shop. At some point in their careers they came across InDesign and eventually adopted it in their workflow.

It didn't take long for Jonathan to state an objective that encapsulated the theme of the meeting and the workshop. While using InDesign, he never wants to do the same thing twice. There has to be a way to automate any repetitive process. Working inefficiently actually takes more time and effort. Jonathan prefers being lazy and getting things done fast. Erica reaffirmed the point stating that she'd rather, "go to Starbucks."

There was a brief discussion on the importance of not losing sight of the utilitarian function of design. Ask the question, "where does the design live?" In other words, how is it used? The mixed up envelopes at this year's Oscars were a case in point. A better design would have provided more obvious visual cues to distinguish the envelopes for one category from another and helped to avoid any confusion.

Speaking of confusion, when companies use designs created by outside design companies, the in-house designers often have difficulty working with the designs. The problem is that although a design may look okay, the unseen structure behind the design is critically important for anyone who needs to work with the files. In InDesign a key aspect of the structure is the Master Pages and Styles. You don't want to see "+" signs next to the names of the Styles. That indicates that somewhere in the document, modified versions of the Style, Styles with added features were used. Try to untangle what is being changed if you decide you want to edit the Style. For the purpose of future editing, it's better to create new Paragraph and Character Styles than to modify existing ones.

Structural problems are a common issue in templates created for InDesign files. This leads Jonathan to subtly suggest, "All templates are horrible!" Even the ones included with Adobe InDesign. So you may want to think twice before using templates.

Erica introduced the topic GREP, which stands for Globally search a Regular Expression and Print. In plain English it's computer commands called scripts that search through text looking for patterns described by the script. Once it finds them, it makes changes to those patterns, which are also dictated by the script. It's a more sophisticated Find and Change tool.

A few other random topics came up. You might want to be wary when you paste graphics into your InDesign files. Potentially they can import unwanted Styles. If you are sharing files you might want to clean out unused colors to avoid confusing others. Pre-flighting files is a good way to check files. There was also a short debate about the merits of the Content Grabber (the transparent donut shaped tool) in InDesign. Jonathan was clearly not a fan. if you agree with him you can turn off that feature.

The evening was an opportunity to casually interact with Erica and Jonathan and ask any questions about InDesign. They were very knowledgeable and also very approachable. It bode well for the, "Full Day of InDesign Coolness" workshop that would follow the next day.

Farthest Attendee

The bona fide LAIDUG member who travels the farthest specifically to attend the meeting will receive her or his choice of any one deal at MightyDeals up to $50.00. Mighty Deals offers fonts, templates, apps, e-books, etc. You need to prove to us that you traveled farthest to attend this meeting. Having recently moved to the area from somewhere else won't cut it. Be prepared to show us indication of your current residence—perhaps a driver's license or a utility bill. Decision of the administrators of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group is final. Winner — Melise Gerber

Raffles

LAIDUG is supported by raffles of donated prizes. No one is required to participate in the raffles. Raffle tickets are: 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 5 for $10, 11 for $20, 24 for $40, 32 for $50 and 65 for $100. All major credit cards are accepted.

Raffle Prizes and Winners

eDocker CREATE! 6 month subscription. Value $774.00 Winner — Robin Schiff

Stock Layouts. Full access to Stock Layout template library. 3 month subscription. Value $299.00 Winner — Robin Schiff

Markzware. Any single product. 12 month subscription. Value $199.00 Winner — Robin Schiff

Expo Creative Asset Manager for Mac from Insider Software. Value $149.00 Winner — Robin Schiff

Font Agent Pro 7 from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Robin Schiff

InMotion Hosting. Web hosting and free domain. Value $90.00 Winner — William Baughman

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. $77.40 Winner — William Baughman

TypeDNA. Font management software. Value $49.00 Winner — Jeff Marcus

Adobe Stock. 15 image licenses. $44.00 Winner — Robin Schiff

InDesign Magazine. 6 month subscription. Value $30.00 Winner — William Baughman

Pluralsight. 1 month subscription. Value $29.00 (two raffles) Winner — William Baughman, Robin Schiff

LA Web Professionals Group meeting tickets. Value $7.99 (four raffles) Winner — Hardy Uneta

Note: Only a few people bought raffle tickets, and among those who did, Robin Schiff bought the most and William Baughman bought the second most.

About the Presenters

Erica Gamet

Erica Gamet has been involved in the graphics industry for nearly 30 years. She is a speaker, writer, and trainer, focusing on Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, Apple Keynote and iBooks Author, and other print- and production-related topics. She is a regular contributor to InDesign Magazine and CreativePro.com, has been a speaker at the InDesign Conference, PePcon, ebookcraft in Canada, and Making Design in Norway; and she offers online tutorials on CreativeLive.com and through her own YouTube channel.

Jonathan Levit

With over 25 years of experience in the graphics, print and digital publishing world, and as an Adobe Certified Instructor and Expert in InDesign Jonathan Levit provides template development and creation, training, and consulting services. Integrating real world experience, he has improved the workflow, production, and creative departments for a variety of clients including the top magazines, advertising agencies, newspapers, and in-house creative and marketing departments in the world. Some of Jonathan’s clients include Warner Brothers, Ogilvy & Mather, Boeing, Time Warner, Los Angeles Times, Disney and UCLA. Learn more about Jonathan at Levity Training.

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