I'm facing a major frustration, and I'm wondering if there's already a solution, or if this needs to be a new feature to be implemented in future InDesign versions.
Adobe Illustrator has a wonderful palette for brushes which can be used as borders for text, etc. However, InDesign seems to be at a standstill in its border palette development since.. well, since the beginning of InDesign. With the exception of some minor corner style developments, designers still seem to be constrained to creating flat, simple multi-lined "Quark" style borders. (e.g.: Thick-Thick, Thick-Thin, etc.) with a propriatory file type: *.inst.
It's impossible to find designers trading *.inst files online, versus the Illustrator Brush file types, *.ai files which can be found in abundance both for free or charge. My theory behind this is that, at some point in the last 10 years, a developer must have intended to expand the border creation abilities in InDesign, but never received any attention and concentrated on other more important features. Well, I'm here to appeal to the developers! It's time! Time, I say!
Now, why would I want the Illustrator Brush/Stroke functionality in InDesign?
Well, it seems like a no-brainer to me; it's a matter of workflow. When I'm designing anything more complicated than a logo or digital illustration, such as a flyer, a book, or any other multi-page piece with text and illustrations, I use InDesign for its pre-press abilities, bleed setups, typography styles, linking, etc. Thus, it just makes sense that if I make a border around a page, I should have a nice, wide variety of borders to choose from, or create ones on the fly from Illustrator *.ai files just like in Illustrator.
This apparent lack of cross-compatibility means in order to achieve anything more than a flat line or easter-egg smiley faces, I'm limited to creating a pre-shaped border Illustrator and placing it into the page. Resizing becomes a disaster as they end up having to be treated as illustrations rather than borders. "Edit original", "Edit original", "Edit original".
During my scouring of the net for a solution, I've found many other designers out there with the same question., some dating all the way back to CS2 days.
Incidentally, while we're at it, heck, I'd love to see the same abilities in Photoshop. I mean why not? It's got vector tools in there as well. There really needs to be more universal palettes in the entire Adobe Creative Suite series. It just makes sense. The unification theory of palettes! Mwahahaha! *clasps his hands* Yes, I ask for too much.. but.. well, it's a good idea, ain't it?
But seriously. It would be of massive use in InDesign; I'm surprised that it doesn't yet exist ten years into InDesign history. Is there a solution at this point? Or is this more of a feature request?
Cheers.
—RR—