Designing printed forms in InDesign CS2

December 13, 2006 1:54 PM

Any advice or resources on best practices when designing printed forms in InDesign CS2? I have a registration form to design (and will have several dozen others to redesign in the new year) and would like to do things right the first time.

I've learned a lot about correctly using, say, nested stylesheets, libraries, master pages and the like for documents of all sorts in the last few years. My publication workflow is streamlined and nerdy and zen and that makes me happy every time I crack open InDesign.

But I've picked up very little about tables (especially limitations thereof), underlines, aligning labels, spacing things for hand entry by pen, and all those other various and sundry little things that we come across on paper forms every day.

The existing registration form I'm starting from was made in Word and is truly painful--I'm talking word art, centered-headlines-using-a-bunch-of-spaces, comic sans, the whole nine yards--and so I'm doubly excited about rebuilding things properly from scratch in InDesign. Obviously these things differ from case to case but I'm looking for some ground rules.

I found a print-to-order book called Table and Form Design in InDesign, but it has no reviews. I guess what I'm looking for are comments on the book if anyone has read it, as well as other links to tutorials along the lines of what you might find on InDesign Secrets (especially their videocasts). Thanks for any leads anybody can offer!

posted by bcwinters to computers & internet (4 answers total)

No InDesign specific advice, but my advice for designing forms in general is print them and fill them out. Have other people fill them out, and use real info. Is it clear? Is there enough space for my long-ass middle name?

So many forms look good but don't work well.
posted by letitrain at 2:37 PM on December 13, 2006

The same guy who wrote that book has a short tutorial over here. Reading that might give you some sense of how good his book is.
posted by wemayfreeze at 3:57 PM on December 13, 2006

I started to answer this yesterday but got called out of the office.

I do this all freaking day. Email me for help. Letitrain's suggestion is a great first step for concept, but as far as designing the forms in IDCS itself:

TABLES. Make it all one big table with multiple cells. You will be happy you did;

a) makes it MUCH more consistent;
b) ends all alignment issues;
c) translates beautifully to the web (i'm not getting into a CSS/HTML table discussion here, though);
d) ease of editing!

I can email you a bunch I've made this way if you like.

hundertwasser at yahoo dot com
posted by luriete at 9:36 AM on December 14, 2006

Thanks you three! (Any further suggestions appreciated, too)
posted by bcwinters at 6:05 PM on December 14, 2006