Ep. 318: Khara Plicanic Interview

·54 min·5 clips

David and Anne-Marie reveal secrets hidden in InDesign's pre-flight panel and a feature so obscure it's called 'recompose all stories when modified'.

The episode opens with hosts David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion introducing the show's topics: news, an interview with Khara Plicanic, secrets of the pre-flight panel, and an obscure feature. They start with news about InDesign 19.3, highlighting a new import/export user settings feature that saves preferences, workspaces, and keyboard shortcuts to a single file, which Adobe did not widely publicize. They mention InDesign 19.4 is rolling out with expected accessibility fixes and Publish Online updates. The hosts promote online events like the InDesign and Long Documents Summit and Creative Pro Week in July, offering a discount code. They discuss the May issue of Creative Pro Magazine, featuring articles on InDesign tabs, vectorizing logos, neural filters, and backups. The interview with Khara Plicanic begins, marking her first appearance on the show. Khara shares her 20-plus years using InDesign, starting from a photography background where she used it to design wedding albums quickly, contrasting with slower industry software. She mentions presenting at events like WPPI and PEPCON. Khara now works as program manager for Creative Pro Week, finding speakers like George Baker III and Orlando Aracena. She recalls winning a 'three minute max' session at Creative Pro Week by demonstrating blend modes in InDesign for photo overlays, which surprised attendees. The conversation emphasizes learning through experimentation and making mistakes. The hosts then explore the pre-flight panel, explaining its basics like checking overset text and missing fonts. They reveal secrets: customizing profiles beyond the default 'basic', exporting/importing profiles, embedding profiles in templates, and saving reports as PDFs. Tips include using Option-click to expand all errors and turning off live preflight to improve performance. The obscure feature of the week is 'recompose all stories when modified', a preference under Dictionary that affects hyphenation exceptions; they discuss how it works and a keyboard shortcut to manually recompose text. The episode concludes with calls to engage via show notes and social media groups.

As heard by us

A granular InDesign update turns into a warm look at overlooked tools and practical creative confidence.

Episode 318 looks at InDesign as a tool people use every day, but also as a place where small habits can turn into useful discoveries. David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion start with the 19.3 release's import and export preferences, then move into the pre-flight panel and the…

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Want an under-the-radar InDesign 19.3 feature, preflight secrets, and a blend-mode tip that once won the room?

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