Just now, I had a very lovely exercise in using InDesign.

One of my coworkers/supervisors, gave me the task of designing a stationery system for a law firm. After going through two rounds of critique for layout on their envelope, business card and letterhead, they decided to stick with the one they already had. It’s very simple. Text in the upper right (Gill Sans), logo in the lower left.

My coworker/supervisor has a newer version of InDesign, so I couldn’t directly edit his file to input the names of the individuals for the business cards. So, he sent me the logo and told me the font and made a pdf of his InDesign file. I placed the pdf in my business card size document, centered it and locked the layer. Over it, I typed the same text and placed the .eps logo until they overlapped. I adjusted the leading, font size and font thickness (most of the type was in the “light” version of Gill Sans). I used that as a master-page and applied it to my one page. Then I hit the “add pages.” And then I had 9 pages. I shift-command-clicked each text box to paste the different names. Exported as a pdf and voila! You have semi-individualized business cards. The whole process took me 30 minutes from getting the email to sending the email with the attached pdf.