Indesign Template Question

Have you ever purchased an InDesign template? If so, would you be willing to share what type of template and what was the project? This is for a market research project.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Nope. Not me.

Most here are professional graphic designers. We donā€™t typically purchase InDesign templates that others have designed. We tend to design our own.

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Typically I help out on other forums (Adobe run ones) and from time to time people have terrible problems with templates, so I go in and download them and check them out.

And they are the worst files you can imagine.
I downloaded a template that was designated for print.

It had gray icons - and the breakdown was something like 54.123 12.1314 15.9913 99.988

They have text frames all over the page.

The entire structure of the document was horrendous.

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Nope never. My clients donā€™t either (I work in custom print for some relatively niche clients.) While they may template a larger project, they do it all themselves and know when and how to break the rules of the system.

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I have a folder full of hundreds of InDesign templates that I have used for various jobs over the years. I created each one as the need arose, and they get re-used on a regular basis. Some are very complex (different stepping ups for A5 booklets depending on how the job is to be folded before finishing is one example).

I think my boss would question my abilities if I asked about purchasing a template for InDesign or anything else.

I wouldnā€™t share these templates because they are set up to be used on our platesetter / digital print machine and would be of little use outside of our organisation. Iā€™m happy to give advice about templates and have done so on many occasions.

[EDIT] I just counted - over 4,000 templates in my folder

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Nope. Never, everything I do in InDesign is designed by me to fit the design need. And not to such an extreme as @StudioMonkey but since I am an inhouse designer I have probably 40 or so templates that I have created that I use as starting points for various documents or are true templates for ā€œrepeatableā€ documents (especially collateral).

Someone isnā€™t getting the marketing answers they want, I betā€¦ :rofl:

Any stock company that sells templates should hire a professional designer or 6 to vet the functionality of any template design submitted.

Or have some sort of preflight going on to ensure some sort of quality

Everything I do is bespoke for the client. No templates.

The OP ought to try those graphics designing forums. Iā€™ll bet templates will be more prevalent over there.

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Iā€™m not even sure thereā€™s a stable market for InDesign templates. Most professionals donā€™t need (or want) them, and most amateurs canā€™t justify buying and learning InDesign. Those who can are moving to easier, more interactive online templates of the sort that Canva provides.

Sure there is. Plenty of people out there selling design services from piss poor templates downloaded for free.

Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to respond! I realize I may have excluded some details. We are professional designers who have identified a gap in the market. Weā€™ve been asked a few times about professionally designed ready-made templates, as opposed to quick InDesign templates created by just anyone. Weā€™d like to hear from fellow professionals who have felt the need to purchase a template, not because they lack skills, but for other reasons, whether itā€™s for a client project or a personal passion project.

I think the general feeling here is that we all create our own pending client briefs.

Each client has their own branding, fonts, preferred layouts, imagery, brand colours, and even examples of previous work.

I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever needed a template in over 25 years doing this.

My comment about it possibly being an unstable market wasnā€™t meant to suggest a market didnā€™t exist. Instead, I was suggesting a possible declining market due to less demanding and more accessible alternatives that amateurs are gravitating toward, like Canva.

Iā€™m seeing the overabundance and inferior quality of so many InDesign templates as another possible sign of a declining market. Itā€™s much the same as with fonts: tons of low-quality, low-cost, and free fonts have crippled the market for well-made commercial fonts ā€” plus Adobe giving CC subscribers access to the Adobe font library and the higher-quality open-source fonts freely available from Google fonts.

I have seen some work in the background for AI design

Itā€™s coming.

We just got an AI notice for our toy laser software that theyā€™ve added AI design. Describe it and itā€™ll draw it. Didnā€™t have time today, but it could be an amusing thing. AI design is always an amusing thing.
And where Adobe completely forgets that large format exists, I canā€™t wait to see what AI assumptions are gonna get made there too. :slight_smile:

I think the ā€˜gap in the marketā€™ exists for all the reasons noted above. Clients may ask for InDesign templates so they can muck around using a starting point totally ignoring the fact they donā€™t actually know how to use Indesign.

In the work I do that has templates, they are project specific, the lead designer comes up with the overall theme and usually they, or an assistant, fill in the provided copy and photo assets. Jobs like what youā€™d see if you went to a National Park museum. All one offs, with a theme - but there are templates.

If thatā€™s the kind of template you mean, I still donā€™t see the market for it. Other than maybe as another layer in the process where the end client might hire you to come up with a template then ask someone like me (pre-press tech) to fill in the content. Not gonna save them any money though. Noo, not by a longshot.

Yeah I just realised that the templates I was speaking of are almost all layout templates for stepping up prior to print. Only a few stock design templates are used, mostly things like invoices where we just change the company details (and we offer a choice of 6-7 with the option to customise as required).