Adobe Illustrator and InDesign are both available through the Creative Suite. If you’re trying to put together a design for your logo, website, or traditional print designs, both platforms offer the potential to give you what you need.
Illustrator is a vector graphics editor. It allows you to perform typesetting, create artboards, and handle vector shapes.
InDesign is a desktop publisher. It allows you to create multi-page documents quickly through helpful templates, typesetting, and other dashboard commands so a large amount of word-based content can be ready to print in a short amount of time.
Why Choose to Use Adobe Illustrator?
Illustrator is a good option for those who need to create images of various sizes for their print-ready designs. An image in Illustrator will look the same at the size of a thumbnail image as it will when plastered on a billboard along the side of an interstate. That’s why it is such an effective tool for logos. The logo will not pixelate, no matter what the size of the final image happens to be.
At the same time, you have the options to create artboards so you have a digital workspace that lets you try out ideas before you finalize them. The platform allows you to even place images created from Photoshop into the design while incorporating design layouts that are reminiscent of InDesign.
You’ll want to use Illustrator when you need to create branding materials. It is an excellent option for one-page print-ready designs, such as a poster or a business card. It’s also the best option if you need to set type for a logo, creating consistent imagery that can be used on virtually any scale.
If you need to edit images, create multi-page documents, or have a large amount of text-based content to print, then Illustrator may not be the best choice to meet your needs.
Why Choose to Use InDesign?
Adobe created the InDesign platform to make it easier to approach the desktop publishing segment of the media market. It is an excellent tool for any type of print design that incorporates a large amount of text. Books, newspapers, magazines, and even one-page designs with heavy text elements will benefit from what this platform can offer.
Although Illustrator does allow users to create text layouts, InDesign allows users to create a master-page template so that an entire multi-page document is instantly formatted properly throughout the entire design. You can have your pages numbered automatically, have them duplicated, or switch them in or out of the design with relative ease. You can also add margins, columns, and unique designs to each page.
You’ll want to use InDesign if your project is a multi-page piece. Items that are heavy with text will also benefit from using this platform. The emphasis is on creating a print-ready piece, but InDesign does a good job of creating lengthy digital projects as well. You have access to better typesetting features and the platform integrates in Adobe’s digital publisher. That means you can create interactive publications with relative ease.
For smaller jobs, InDesign struggles to match what Illustrator can provide. If you need to edit images, this platform provides virtually no capabilities at all. InDesign can create some limited shape elements, but it would be better to create the design in another Adobe platform and then import it into this one.
Adobe Illustrator vs InDesign: Which is Right for You?
Illustrator is nice because it can turn you sketches into real art. You can create posters, add text elements, and create compound paths that will help to create a professional graphic design in just minutes.
InDesign is nice because it helps writers be able to format their work to industry standards without the same hassles that word processing platforms typically cause. Although it is limited in graphic design capabilities, it is the best option for print media and images can be incorporated into the templates that you design.
To create the best possible project, you need to be using the right tools. For many, that means having access to both Illustrator and InDesign. If you only want to use one platform, however, then think about the differences between a photographer and a writer.
If your work is more like that of a photographer, then choose Illustrator. If your work is more like a writer, then choose InDesign.
Have you used either Illustrator or InDesign from Adobe? What do you feel the advantages of each platform happen to be?
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