What are some tips for creating professional-looking business reports and proposals in InDesign?

If you are not a designer, use a template, otherwise you know how to use InDesign and make a stunning composition using two main elements: 1. A beautiful concept 2. A grid that may help you to structure your main idea and the content. Templates are useful if your client doesn't pay you enough and you need to reduce time and effort to balance your production process.

As some have said, using a template is a great idea if a) you aren't really a "designer" or b) you have a project that requires either a very quick turnaround or a small budget - meaning you don't have the time to create something unique. That said, for non-designers a template will never be more than a quick fix. The customization needed to create something that is truly reflective of your brand and it's "design" language requires some design sensibility. Further more often than not, one really needs a designer to convince them that 2000 words per page will not be optimal.

Adobe InDesign offers a wide range of templates designed for various business documents such as brochures, reports, and presentations. These templates can save time, provide a professional layout, and serve as a starting point for customization. Whether you need a sleek corporate design or a creative publication, InDesign's template library can be a valuable resource for efficient document creation.

Hay que tener en cuenta que los gráficos e imágenes deben a?adir valor, no solo decorar. Una imagen muy atractiva pero que no aporte solo resta y da una imagen amateur y de desorden. Los gráficos deben de ser variados (de dispersión, tartas, barras, etc) según el tipo de dato que se pretenda ilustrar. Deben ser fáciles de comprender o con un buen apoyo de texto si son complejos. Por supuesto, deben ir en consonancia con las tipografías, estilos y paleta de color del documento. Puede parecer una obviedad pero ocurre con cierta frecuencia que encuentras gráficos con estilos diferentes que dan imagen de estar “pegados” directamente de Internet. Ah, no olvides citar las fuentes. En los gráficos de los datos y en las imágenes de la autoría.

This is something always critical. When creating professional-looking business reports and proposals in InDesign, it's essential to focus on engaging design and visual storytelling. To achieve this, - consider finding the data story and using lively but purposeful coloring, eye-catching visualizations, and a consistent color palette across the report. - Additionally, choose the right design tool, such as Adobe InDesign, to ensure high-quality and visually appealing reports. By deploying this approach, you can create reports that capture attention, inspire action, and facilitate the decision-making process, ultimately making your content more engaging and impactful

Approach master pages thoughtfully. Create a basic framework - headline, sub-head, and body text first. Once you've created a few pages with this formatting, you will better understand if it will be adequate for the whole document/project. Then, you can add callouts/pull quotes, captions, image placeholders, etc, if needed. Once you have the whole document roughly fleshed out, you can add headers, page numbers, etc. - though reapplying master pages can get a bit messy, adding elements as you go will make it easier to keep from getting locked into a system that isn't flexible enough for your needs.

Grids and guides are invaluable to keep your document consistent, predictable, and easy to assemble, especially if you are dealing with long-format content. Build your basic grids and guides into your master pages to ensure a consistent application throughout.