Presentation is Everything: Proposals, Drawings and Specs exhibited in a manner to impress the client.

By Jerry Short, art director

It?EUR??,,????'???s vital for landscape architect firms to present their design proposals in a professional, appealing manner. Some firms are still using PageMaker??????oe to showcase their designs, but now Adobe Systems offers a new software solution, InDesign??????oe CS PageMaker??????oe Edition, to ?EUR??,,????'??wow?EUR??,,????'?? the client.

There are strong incentives to make the switch. Whether your firm is PC or Mac-based, the upgrade in software will save time and money while enhancing your proposals and promotional pieces. The PageMaker??????oe Edition runs on Windows 2000 or the Windows XP operating system for the PC, which means increased efficiency by using the latest operating system that is installed on new PCs. For the Mac, PageMaker 7 runs in Classic, while InDesign operates in OS X Native. Need I say more? Now onto the details of how the new software will help.

The template browser allows quick and easy access to preset and custom-made templates. The templates are categorized by either publication type, or visual theme, and have several subcategories within each type.

Template Browser

There are many new features to help you create great looking proposals and designs. One of those features is the template browser. The browser is accessed by choosing Window>Template Browser or (Shift+Command+2, for Mac.) As shown in the photo, the template browser allows you to chose from 80 design templates, each categorized into different groups, or by setting up your own custom templates. This way, if you have letterheads, business cards or brochures, they can be saved as templates and accessed quickly.

story editor, similar to the one used in PageMaker, allows customized text editing. As the text is changed, it can be viewed in the document for overall flow and how it affects the design.

Story Editor

This feature is handy for quick layout edits. If you are a landscape architect with little graphic experience, don?EUR??,,????'???t fret, the story editor works in a word processing format. As shown in the example, the story editor also shows how the text flow affects the overall design layout and its And aesthetics.

Top Bar: The control palette used in PageMaker is also used for InDesign. It allows switching between character and paragraph styles.
Bottom Bars: The tool bar with common commands is also back. Here you can a direct comparison between the Mac and the Windows version?EUR??,,????'??+very little difference.

Familiar Items

Many of the tool bars used in PageMaker??????oe are back. The control palette is a floating bar as before and allows quick switching between character and paragraph styles. This makes the adjustment of font sizes or types and alignments available at the touch of a button. Also, the tool bar switches to graphic mode by selecting a picture or line. The command bar contains many common functions: save, print, text sizing and many more.

The PageMaker??????oe plug-in pack allows data and pictures to be imported into defined insertion points, making it easy to create layouts displaying many landscape designs.

Data Merge

An extremely useful tool for the landscape architect is the merge feature. You can flow text and pictures anywhere you desire onto the template. The data is read from a comma or tab-delimited file created from a word processor or spreadsheet program.

InBooklet and Bullet Lists

The InBooklet feature allows the landscape architect to see a preview of the final printed piece. If a picture or text is out of place, it can be adjusted before sending it to the printer.

Creating bullets or numbered lists is as simple as pressing a button on the command bar. The list can be adjusted from the command bar or, for more refined detail, a window with more options can be found in the paragraph tab.

The InBooklet special edition plug-in allows the landscape architect to preview the document layout prior to printing it.

In Closing

There are many added features that increase the value of this software upgrade: ability to dock the palette on the side for easy access and less clutter, adding shadows to text or graphics, manipulating vector-based text that is fully editable, and much more.

If you are a landscape architect with graphic experience, or if you employ a graphic artist who works on proposals and advertising media, the InDesign??????oeCS PageMaker??????oe Edition will help you create that professional look and style for all your printed media.

The plug-in pack features automated bullet and numbering. The red arrow shows how it can be accessed with the side-docking palette, another new feature of InDesign.

Adobe Systems, founded in 1982 and based in San Jose, Calif., offers creative software solutions for layout, illustration and photo enhancement.

For more information, visit www.adobe.com