There's no doubt that Word will around for a long time. It's taught in all schools and is the de facto software for Word Processing and document creation worldwide. However, InDesign has become more and more popular in businesses due to the desire to create more consistent and professional internal and external documents.

If you have ever tried to persuade your employees/co-workers/boss to switch to InDesign then you've probably been met with one or all the following:

I don't want to learn new software!

It's too complicated!

There's nothing wrong with Word!

I'm going to try and dispel these myths with 6 reasons why now is the right time to switch from Word to InDesign:

1/ Adding pictures won't make you go crazy

Ever tried herding cats? It's a bit like managing images in Microsoft Word. They never stay put (except when they get stuck) and never go where you want them to.

InDesign gives you complete freedom of placement as well as some very smart guides to help align objects perfectly.

2/ You can shape text how you want

One of my favourite features of InDesign is linked text boxes. Using these you can paste or type flowing text into pretty much any shape and manipulate it to your liking.

3/ InDesign doesn't decide its own changes

This happens all the time: you spend hours painstakingly aligning and perfecting your important document in Word, send it to someone else and it looks like it's been created by a toddler. This is especially bad if you are sending a document to a client.

InDesign should keep all of your beautifully aligned objects exactly how you want them and you can rest easy in the knowledge that your document will look the same wherever you open it.

4/ It's easy to create consistent branding

Create a standard template, paragraph stylesheet and swatches for your brand and you're ready to go. Anybody can load them in and it makes it a lot easier to enforce branding across internal and external documents.

5/ The output options

Whatever your output, InDesign has you covered. The printers will love you, eReaders will love you and the web will love you.

6/ Most people don't know Word as well as they think

Going back to the usual protests over switching from Word, I don't believe that many people know Word as well as they claim. This often leads of a significant amount of informal training at a new role. I.e. "How do I change the header?"

Why not test yourself by reading our Beginners Word Course outline? Is there anything there that you can't do?

Formal Indesign Training would mean that everyone would be at the same level, which would cut out basic interruptive formatting questions.