The smoke of our move to Vancouver is clearing slowly. I have a definite sense of having arrived. So I thought I might get down to write about a great work help in InDesign
It called conditional text. It is similar to the layers principle but it is dynamic and not static. What does this mean. Conditional text will affect how the text on your layout is placed. You highlight text parts then create a new conditional text element. Now if you switch the cond. element off the text disappears and the remaining text fills the space just created.
Why would you use this feature. Well imagine producing a text which is identical for two people but for their names, perhaps their address and a few location names. Now you could create in the same position different text elements with varying length (thing a very long address compared to a short one) A layer would leave a nasty gap in your design. This new feature will harmoniously move the text around.
It gets even better. You can add loads of different cond. text elements and than group them together into a set. Now you can toggle between sets, and presto change the content while retaining your designed text.