Product
Interactive PDF
Roles
Copy Editor
Document Designer
Tools
InDesign
MS Word
Photoshop
Unsplash
The Intramural Sports Employee Handbook for Western State Colorado University began as a complex and poorly designed Word document. The handbook included page borders, misaligned forms and formatting, heavy centering, and inappropriate highlighting, capitalization and underlining.
Approach
The intent of this document was to create a clean, well designed PDF document with interactive features in way that could still be updated by those unfamiliar with InDesign. Utilizing the Word document itself – rather than copying and pasting text – allows the document owner to maintain the integrity of the original file.
The forms listed within the document were either placed in the middle of the Handbook, or multiple forms were combined within a single page. To make the document user friendly, each form was placed on a dedicated page and included fillable fields and signatures.
Step 1 | Format and edit the document
First, I removed any formatting and decorative elements. Intended forms were edited into separate documents.
Throughout the formatting process, I performed high-level edits by removing repetitive text, adjusting punctuation, and correcting other grammatical errors.
Step 2 | Rough in the layout
Next, I created a rough layout in InDesign of how I wanted the handbook to look and function. Because this document would most likely be viewed on a screen, I opted for a landscape orientation. However, there was still potential for this document to be printed as a booklet using tabloid-sized paper.
I made sure my page count of the manual content itself was a multiple of four. I set up the file with a simple grid over a three-column page layout and used the Frame Tool and a color fill to figure out where images, headers and text would go.
Step 3 | Adjust style and add images
With the InDesign file set up, I placed the Word file and organized the content with threaded text frames. I applied heading, callout, bullet, and paragraph styles within the document.
With content dispersed throughout the document in readable chunks and headers, I utilized Unsplash.com to find images that pertained to each section title.
Step 4 | Add interactive features
With the document designed, I added bookmarks, internal hyperlinks, and fields to the forms. While this was possible through Adobe Acrobat, creating the bookmarks within InDesign allowed for the document to be exported directly as an interactive PDF.
This allowed for the auto-adjustment of any interactive elements in the event future changes to the document resulted in content or page shifts.
Final Document
The final document contains both the handbook and the associated forms. By placing the Word document directly into the InDesign file, the document owner can initiate updates by editing the original content, making the communication process more efficient.
While the solution outlined above isn’t perfect, it is an example of how to streamline an editing process between an original document owner and a designer. Workflows that allow for greater collaboration between the designer and the document owner are both time- and cost-effective.
Before
After
