Hi Meikel, I'm not sure the InDesign+Illustrator is the best choice for your wireframe documentation.
If you're using a PC, you should take a look at Axure - http://www.axure.com. I have some friends who have been using it and they seem very happy with it. I've never used it, as I haven't done wireframes for a long time, and also because there is still no Mac version of this software...so, I've never even tried it...But I have close friends using it and loving it, many of them with an "Illustrator background". :-) As far as I know, Axure works in a much clever way, because it's designed to create wireframes **and** also the documentation of the wireframes, the description of elements and pages. You can create your wireframes and describe them using the same tool, in a way that they are linked in the same document, but you can view/print both information isolated if you want to. Also, you can create components that apply to different pages (like a Master Page in InDesign). The software "knows" that it's a component on a page, and that it's description does not need to be repeated on each page. Once you summarize the descriptipn of a page, it only shows what's unique on that page. Axure also seems to be a very handy tool for quick prototyping. It creates a 'website' from your wireframes. And it's easy to link components, create alternative user-flows for some components. That's something very useful to present the project to clients...they can see the wireframes working, and that's something hard to do using static wireframes, with some clients. ;-) Illustrator is very good to design wireframes, but it's easy to get lost trying to make the wireframe more "beautiful". As Axure is design for creating wireframes, it has some 'ready to use' elements that make it faster to work with. On the other hand, you have less options on typography and other graphic design issues...that's a trade-off you have to consider. I guess if you want the presentation richness of InDesign, I mean, if you need fine control of the layout and stuff like that, you should keep it as your documentation tool. Axure's layouts for documentation are really poor ("Microsoft Word" document type of layout, if you know what I mean). Anyway, if you still prefer to use Illustrator+Indesign, I think you might consider creating different files in Illustrator instead of using multiple layers and turning them visible/invisible. I know this may be boring, because this way you end up with many files and eventually you may have some inconsistence with global elements if you change something in a document but not on the other that use the same elements. But it will prevent the problem you described when you update stuff linked in InDesign. Maybe you could create different Illustrator files for global elements and merge them together once you are in Indesign, so if you change an element, you don't have to worry about changing every Illustrator file. You can also do that using Master Pages in InDesign... Let me know what would be your final solution. I'm curious about it. :-) all the best, -- prof. mauro pinheiro universidade federal do espírito santo centro de artes depto. de desenho industrial On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Meikel Steiding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everybody, > > I have a question regarding your Illustrator/Indesign wireframing workflow. > In the upcoming months I am going to create a huge wireframe documentation. > I am going to use InDesign CS3 to layout the whole document and Illustrator > CS3 to create each wireframe graphic. > After putting some thought into my internal file structure I decided that I > want for each chapter a single Illustrator with the different graphics on > each layer. This document will be embedded into the InDesign document. But > today I discovered a rather annoying behavior: > When I place an Illustrator file in my InDesign document and I am going to > add a layer or rename a layer in Illustrator then InDesign needs to update > the linkage and will loose all Information on which page which Illustrator > layer should be visible. Instead all graphics will be the same. That is > really annoying since it means that the Illustrator file needs to be > finished before I can start with the InDesign work. > > So here is my question: How are you organizing your wireframes with an > Illustrator Indesign workflow? Do you have for each graphic in Indesign one > Illustrator file? That would make the whole updating process if something > changes in a chapter quite work intensive. > > All the best > > me. > > > > Best regards! | Mit freundlichen Grüßen > _______________________ > Meikel Steiding ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
