Design Agency, Product
How RF Design uses a super combo to supercharge their report design
UK agency RF Design uses the Datylon plug-in for Illustrator to design charts and data-heavy reports for their customers. The combination of Illustrator - Datylon for Illustrator - InDesign is for them ideal to have the comfort of staying in one application while being able to design highly customized charts in a productive way.
Rachel Fletcher is the Founder and Creative Director of the RF Design agency specialising in education, charity and non-profit sectors.
"We use Datylon for Illustrator to design charts and data-heavy reports for customers. Thanks to Datylon we were able to increase productivity whilst also enjoying more design flexibility."
Data-heavy reports
Each month RF Design creates a number of data-heavy reports for customers, consisting on average of 30+ pages.. Some of these are annual reports, which can be considerably longer.
Staying on brand
Their customers expect these reports to be fully on brand, including all the styling elements - like colors and fonts - in their charts. That’s why they use powerful tools like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
Illustrator charting functions
Illustrator has charting functions that can be useful if you’re on a deadline. Make a quick chart, design, publish. If, however, you need to design charts on a monthly basis or need to use a more complex chart type, you have to use different software and then come back to Illustrator to manually adjust.
“Datylon for Illustrator gives us the comfort to stay in Illustrator, and design highly customized charts in a more productive way.”
Super combo: Illustrator - Datylon - InDesign
When you’re designing multi-page reports with lots of charts, just like RF Design, the combination of Illustrator, InDesign and Datylon for Illustrator is a match made in heaven:- All charts are fully customizable. There is no property you can’t edit
- You get to work with plenty more chart types than what Illustrator is offering
- You can update charts with new data without losing styling efforts
- The different properties in your charts will resize automatically
- You have all your Illustrator color swatches at hand
- Once your charts are placed in InDesign, updating them is just a click away
“It takes some time to discover all the features and possibilities, because there are so many. But once you’ve spent some time with it, it’s simply amazing.”
