Perfect Promotions And Posters With Adobe InDesign

Leon is rather proud of his position as one of the leading music promoters in the northwest. However, he always needs to keep on his toes, and to ensure that shows are pushed as firmly as possible in order to maintain his company's pre-eminence. A lot of this comes, of course, from plugging concerts in magazines or getting attention on the radio - but an essential part of his business is still advertising in print, online and with posters plastered about the city.

These adverts and posters need to be striking, whilst fitting into a suitable style for the kind of music on offer, and also contain enough detail for customers to know where to go and how to buy tickets (but without submerging it in information - everything should be able to be understood at a glance, and ought in no way to detract from the immediate impact). He manages to do this successfully, concert after concert, thanks to Adobe InDesign.

In print

The print adverts and posters are going to be essentially similar, containing the same image and information, but laid out differently to accommodate both the smaller size and the closer position of the reader of the former. Ensuring that the image is just right is critical, not only attracting custom through recognition of a popular musician or band, but also setting the tone for the nature of the show - for example, the style of an image promoting a punk band would be quite different to that for a farewell tour by an ageing lounge singer.

InDesign makes it easy for him to bring images into his work directly from Photoshop, giving him complete control over that vital element of the promotion. With the perfect image in place, creating, formatting and positioning text content is straightforward and intuitive, and would be easy for anyone familiar with a word processor to get to grips with.

Online

Anything that Leon creates for printing in InDesign can be easily published online as a .pdf file or a blog entry. However, as he's looking to promote concerts as effectively as possible, and to reach and persuade as many customers as he can, so he needs online material to be highly engaging and appealing. With InDesign, he can create the content he needs for his shows to stand out from the crowd.

The program gives Leon the power to add Flash animations, or interactive elements, or sound and video - so, for example, he can easily slip into the page a video of a band playing live at a previous concert, or create a list of venues on a tour, with the user hovering over each to see all the necessary details appear instantly. InDesign allows Leon to enhance the content he used in his print advertising - such as fading in the existing text or adding a shiny texture to graphics.

Reuse and recycle

Leon hasn't got where he is today by only promoting one act, however. He needs these posters, adverts and online content for all manner of different shows, and with InDesign, he doesn't need to keep doing the same work over and over again.

Common and repetitive layout tasks, however painstaking and lengthy, can easily be automated: as many of his posters follow the same basic format - full-size image, band name a quarter of the page from the bottom in large type, venue and pricing details in smaller type below it, his own company's logo at the top - he can automate the creation of his layout, so that the foundations of each poster can be created at the touch of a button.

Leon needs his promotional material, whether online or in print, to be engaging and clear enough to get people through the doors - and the success or failure of that persuasion is the success or failure of his business. He can't afford to take chances, and knows that he can rely on InDesign to keep his company progressing steadily. If you need InDesign to give you more control, save you time, and improve the effectiveness of your publications, you may want to consider a short training course to get to grips with all the tools and techniques that the software offers - and to transform the way the world sees your business.