Illustrator vs. InDesign: When to use which design application.

Graphics, meet text.

A good magazine or newspaper doesn’t communicate with just words. Quality publications use layout and visual elements to convey information too. Readers can usually tell a lot about a publication before reading even a single headline. Font sizes in headlines, page designs and photo placement, and even the presence of serif or sans serif fonts all convey important information to a reader.

Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign each have a role to play in creating print and digital publications. With Illustrator, creators can make the graphics and other assets that draw readers’ attention. With InDesign, they can craft layouts that let all of the information, text and visuals alike, exist harmoniously on the page.

When to use Illustrator.

Illustrator is a graphic design and illustration application for creating vector images, which are easy to manipulate, especially in digital publishing. Logos, graphs, and branded icons are all usually vectors, as these graphics often have to appear in multiple formats in different assets, and vector images are much easier to resize than pixel-based graphics. Illustrator is the go-to application to customize typography in logos or make the clean lines that make up an easy-to-understand graph.

Vector vs. raster graphics.

Vector graphics are infinitely scalable because they are based on mathematical formulas. Raster images — i.e., graphics based on pixels — will blur or lose detail if scaled up or down too much and, at larger sizes, inevitably show pixelation. 

However, vector graphics can fit with ease on a surface as small as a business card or as large as a billboard. The relationships and ratios between points are always the same regardless of size, so vector graphics are often more flexible than raster graphics.

Sketch your ideas, literally.

Graphic designers and artists can create vector graphics in several ways in Illustrator, including with a stylus. Creators can easily take an electronic pen in hand to make sketches that become art, logos, portraits, cartoons. Draw in Illustrator with different digital pens, brushes, and pencils, and choose from a variety of paper and canvas types to achieve an analog look within a digital environment.

When to use InDesign.

InDesign is a desktop publishing and layout application for creating books, magazines, and brochures, as well as print and digital publications. It’s the industry standard editing software for laying out long-form multipage documents, but it’s not limited to that. You can also use InDesign to create stationery, annual reports, business cards, interactive digital publications, and anything else that brings text and graphics together.