Difference between illustrator and indesign"

Illustrator is an editor for vector graphics and single-page documents. The classic use case would be creating a logo.
InDesign is a document editor. The classic use case would be a magazine or a book.

Oh, it goes far beyond that, and shouldn’t be limited by those specific parameters either, but that’s a good start.

Indesign has it’s uses for single page layout simply for the way it handles larger image file sizes in preview and for its most excellent color control compared to Illustrator. If you’ve ever waited for a redraw in iIlustrator because of an image over 500mb, you know what wasting billable time is. Illustrator also has the dumb habit of not allowing you to move masked objects off the artboard even though you can’t see all of the object. Not a problem in InDesign.

Illustrator can be used for specific multi-page work, like tiling a mural or doing a bunch of files all the same size dimensions (the mural panels can be different sizes.) But you really have to know what your doing and have a printer on board with it.

Every once in a while I get a designer sending me Illustrator files with a different graphic on each layer and I’m supposed to turn on the layer to print. Don’t do that.

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