Yeah, I know. InDesign. This week’s free Deke’s Techniques movie features Deke showing you how (and why) to turn off that decidedly annoying Recently Used fonts list that lurks, Microsoft Word-like, in the Fonts pop-up menu in Adobe InDesign.

Someone (someone, I suspect, who doesn’t use styles and learned their page layout skills in Microsoft Word) must have thought it convenient to have those randomish fonts sitting there right at the top of the list, rather than properly ordered alphabetically, like they were meant to be.

But what’s the big deal with a changing menu? Well, if you’re using a tool often enough, you actually want things to be where you want them to be. And if you want to run through a list of fonts from the up/down arrow keys, then you want them to be in a predictable order. I mean, who memorizes fonts in the order that they last used them? (And what’s wrong with you?)

So yeah, Deke and InDesign. In fact, Deke’s got a whole new course on InDesign for those of you who only require the need-to-know stuff. It’s aptly named Introducing InDesign, and you can watch it at lynda.com. Not a member? Then go introduce yourself to a free week’s trial at lynda.com/deke, then meet all kinds of helpful new friends.

Of course you can always use your free week to catch up on the whole collection of Deke’s Techniques. And if you like it short and sassy, but crave more InDesign tips, then you can also use your subscription to check out David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion’s biweekly InDesign quick tip called InDesign Secrets. Deke’s Techniques, InDesign, David. Anne-Marie, Secrets. That’s a good group of new friends to start this new year.