Flex Layouts in InDesign: Practical Uses Beyond the Hype

• Pre-presentation networking begins at the event start time
• The formal presentation begins 30 minutes later

Flex Layouts in Adobe InDesign are often dismissed as a niche or experimental feature, yet they address a set of very real, everyday layout problems that many designers solve repeatedly by hand.

In this presentation, Tina DeJarld will examine where Flex Layouts provide genuine practical value and where they do not. The focus is on production realities rather than theory—how Flex Layouts can help stabilize page elements, reduce manual rework, and make layouts more resilient as content changes.

Topics and use cases will include how Flex Layouts can be applied to:

• Groups of objects that need to maintain consistent spacing and alignment as items are added, removed, or resized
• Recurring layout components such as sidebars, pull quotes, image-and-caption groupings, feature boxes, and inset content
• Pages and sections where late-stage editorial changes would normally require repeated nudging, resizing, and re-aligning
• Long documents where visual consistency depends on maintaining relationships among elements rather than fixed positions
• Modular page structures common in non-fiction books, manuals, catalogs, reports, and publication design

The session will also clarify how Flex Layouts relate to—rather than replace—established InDesign tools such as master pages, object styles, paragraph styles, and text flow. Understanding these boundaries is key to using Flex Layouts effectively instead of forcing them into inappropriate workflows.

By grounding the feature in real production scenarios, this presentation aims to help experienced InDesign users decide when Flex Layouts are worth using, when they add unnecessary complexity, and how they can quietly improve efficiency without changing core design principles.

About Tina DeJarld

Tina DeJarld has worked on the front lines of taking designs from the computer screen to real-world production since before InDesign 1.0. She is highly accomplished in graphic design, production art, and prepress, with a particular passion for building files that work correctly in real-world conditions.

She has handled thousands of large and complex projects, becoming an expert in InDesign best practices and techniques, and has been a coauthor of Adobe’s InDesign Classroom in a Book since the 2018 edition.

Tina is currently a senior graphic designer at Heartbeat, a Publicis creative agency, where she creates materials for clinical trials. A core part of her work is building English master files that can flex efficiently for translation into other languages—especially those that require more text—while minimizing manual adjustments.

Free Drawing

All attendees are eligible to participate in a free drawing. No purchase or donation is required. However, you must attend the presentation to be eligible. Prizes delivered electronically are available to anyone in the world. Physical prizes are available to anyone in the U.S. without a shipping charge. Winners from outside the U.S. who choose a physical prize must bear the cost of shipping.

Reminder: IDUG is a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent that the law allows.