In our Indesign training courses we spend a lot of time showing you how to set up user-friendly templates to save time in setting up brochures.
For example, go to File > Create New Document. Set the number of pages to 8 and tick Facing Pages. Then set the page size to A4 with an Orientation of Landscape and a Bleed guide of 3mm. Keep the Slug set to zero. Set the top and bottom margins to 20mm and the inside & outside to 15mm. Create two columns with a gutter value of 6mm and hit OK.
Next we create two layers, one for Graphics and one for Text. We would also create new colour swatches with our corporate colours, derived form the company style guide.
The next step is to create some Master Page elements, for instance automatic page numbering via Insert Special Characters > Markers > Current page number – this will show up as the letter A which stands for A-Master, but will appear as a number on a local page.
We could also place the company logo on one of the master pages.
Next we create Paragraph Styles within the template, for things like body text and a couple of header styles. Maybe also a quotation style and an italic style – these should be saved as Character styles. And lastly we’d create an object styles with the text wrap option of Wrap Around Bounding Box and an offset value of 2mm – this will make the text jump off each image.
Finally go to File and choose Save As > Indesign CC Template (an indt file). Then every month or so, whenever a new brochure is needed, we simply open the template and insert our text and images for that issue, apply the text styles, and output as a PDF.
More tips and techniques can be found at Adobe user groups which meet regularly in most capital cities, and are free forums for designers to discuss topics and the latest Indesign features. See also many examples of our own clients’ work on our Facebook page.
Other related Indesign Blog Posts:

• Indesign images and text
  
• Indesign workflow
• Indesign templates
• Indesign page numbers
• Indesign add hyperlink