[Sigia-l] And then there's Inspiration

[Todd R.Warfel]

I'm actually thinking about either switching to Freehand for this type 
of work, or a combination of Illustrator and InDesign/Quark. Currently, 
my process is to use Illustrator. Here's why I'm thinking of adjusting 
my workflow:

One of the reasons a lot of people are giving for using Visio is that 
you can copy/paste into Word and they send out a lot of their 
documentation as Word/PPT. That still means you have to copy paste.

Illustrator's biggest disadvantage for this type of work is that it 
doesn't support multiple pages. So, when you do Wireframes, it's a bit 
of a hassle to send them out as PDFs. You have to make a separate 
document for them. This is an advantage that Visio/Freehand have.

Now, on the other hand, you can save the pages out as EPS files, or 
PDFs individually, import those into InDesign/Quark, and build your 
first document. After that, every time you update the images, the 
ID/Quark document will automatically update them in that document. This 
saves a lot of time over the copy/paste method used between Visio and 
Word.

Additionally, if it's done in Freehand, it could save that whole 
initial build of the documentation, since it supports multiple pages.

My biggest gripes with Visio over Illustrator/Freehand:
• It's not that intuitive
• It's slow to move around in (miss the keyboard shortcuts in 
Illustrator/Freehand)
• There's no Mac version (not that I would use it if there were)
• It's awkward - it's like taking butcher paper, laying it on top of 
large rocks, and trying to draw with huge pieces of chalk
•  It's very limitiing
• It was never meant for this type of work (not that 
Illustrator/Freehand were either, but they're better suited for visual 
illustrations)

I know a lot of people use it, but most of them aren't really sure why 
they do, other than "Other people use it."

Thoughts?


On Tuesday, August 12, 2003, at 11:29 AM, Andrew Heaton wrote:

> I'm way productive and have few hassles using Inspiration for sitemaps
> and Illustrator for wireframes.
>
> Andrew Heaton
> Organic

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

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