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InDesign and Illustrator look pretty similar on the surface; they share a lot of the same tools and a familiar interface but were designed to serve different roles.

InDesign was built for arranging and formatting existing content to make a finished document. Whether it’s a book, birthday card, calendar, brochure, anything that you’re designing that will have a specific size should probably be laid out in InDesign. Illustrator on the other hand is for designing the individual pieces of content that go into your finished design; logos, maps, charts, patterns, all of the vector based elements should be created in illustrator (anything photographic should be done in photoshop) and then placed into InDesign.

There is nothing stopping you use either of them however you like, but much like trying to eat soup with a knife, it’s going to take longer and be a considerably messier if you don’t use the right tool for the job.