Graphic Design. Done Right.

Many municipalities need a way for residents and businesses to understand who runs the many aspects of the municipality. Are the roads governed by the Federal government, The Province/County or the Local Village? 

This map, created for Sturgeon County in Alberta Canada, with the client, V3 Companies, was for residents to find out that very information. Programs used: InDesign and the Plug-in “in5” to export as an HTML5 document.

I’ve been working on the Kinter Catalog, for Kinter International, Waukegan, Il for the past 10 years. When I first received the files, each of the 1000+ products were in a separate text frame, a table, a photo and line art. All elements were grouped together. There were 2-5 groups of products on each page. Each year, new products are added and others are removed or rearranged, creating the need for a continuous flow for the products.

The first year, I rebuilt the 200+ page catalog so it could be used year after year, easily adding and removing products. I put all the products in one threaded text frame, I turned the tables into a Table Style and Anchored all of the tables, photos and line art so each would stay with the product description. It took some time on the front end, but every year, each new catalog has been easier because of the up front preparation.

I have been working with MW Industries for many years, first, completing a 500+ page catalog of Spring Components. Currently I convert old catalogs from their many divisions to conform to the new branding guidelines. 

I’ve completed over 40 catalogs for this fine art paperweight auction company, located in Chicago, Il. Three times each year, I’m provided with 350+ new photos and an excel spreadsheet of the product descriptions. Using Scripts, Paragraph Styles, Object Styles, Bridge, Find and Change and other InDesign layout tricks, I can have a completed 66 page proof back to them within the day. When I took on the project 10+ years ago, I had asked how long it took the previous designer to have a proof back and the answer was about 5-6 weeks. InDesign allows me the flexibility to be accurate and incredibly fast with all of my documents.

A Park District Brochure has so many working parts. There are word files of offered classes, Excel tables of prices, photos of the residents enjoying classes and events and logos from sponsors. I crafted a template by making Paragraph Styles which allow me to quickly apply formatting to hundreds of paragraphs of classes quickly. I use Object Styles, Scripts, Tables, Table of Contents and Find and Change to produce a great looking and functional document in record time.

Imagine traveling to all 50 states, with your 4 boys, all in a span of 10 years. This family wanted a poster to commemorate this feat, and I was happy to deliver.

We assembled at least one photo of the family from each state, and placed it into the shape of each state in a map of the United States.

I worked with an author to format. proofread and upload his book to Amazon KDP for print as well as create an eBook. I placed the completed (well, not quite…. we did quite a bit of proofreading and editing) into InDesign, and created his masterpiece, complete with a Table of Contents, Index, Notes and Bibliography.

Check out the book Restorative Faith, Christianity for the 21st Century Rationalist on Amazon.

Three years later, we repeated the process with his second book, Restorative Beauty, Spirituality for the 21st Century Rationalist

My Dad, Larry Olson, a retired High School History/English teacher, started a memoir in the 1970s as a school project. Over the years, he had added to it. In 2020, when we were staying home and connecting on Zoom, we decided that it was time to finish the book and get it published. After adding over 175 photos to enhance the story in this 410 page memoir of an Iowa Farm Boy, our family has a history that we will cherish forever. In the Shadow of the Cottonwood Tree illustrates in detail, growing up in a small, midwest town, learning that education was the way to excel and how one man and his family navigated growing up. Purchase today on Amazon. 

It had been 12 years since my client had printed their catalog. We didn’t have the original files. Instead of formatting 1000+ products by hand, I used an InDesign plug-in from EMsoftware.com called InData.

The client provided a spreadsheet with all the product information; Product name, photo name, attributes, link to the photo on the server etc. With InData, I wrote code to format 1000s of products, which I flowed onto and formatted in a click of a button. The client was able to clean the data which fed her website as well as print a 500+ page catalog! When there were product updates, we simply ran a new spreadsheet and the data updated, styles were applied and photos were anchored.

After we printed the paper catalog, I created online flipbooks (using another InDesign Plug-In called in5) for each section. These flipbooks are hosted on the company website.

Take a look to see the product name, photo, information and a table compiled from a spreadsheet with 25+ possible columns. 

Flipbook Example