What is the course about?
This course is intended for publishers, pre-press professionals, creative professionals and print professionals. The course will enable you to use InDesign to create single and multiple page documents, whether working as a company employee, a freelancer or producing your own personal projects. You will learn to use the essential tools in InDesign
Through demonstrations and practical exercises, we will guide you through the workspace, working with text and graphics, creating simple vector-based graphics, and the basics of design. You will also learn how to apply consistency to your text through the use of paragraph and character styles. You will learn how add colour, create tables and objects and package a professional folder to send to commercial printers. InDesign is part of Adobe Creative Cloud and works seamlessly with other Adobe software such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
This is a live online course. For more information please see our guide to online learning.
We will contact you with joining instructions before your course starts.
What will we cover?
• Navigating the InDesign work environment
• Placing and managing images
• Adding and managing pages
• Working with Master pages
• Placing, inputting and formatting text
• Threading text frames
• Creating character and Paragraph Styles
• Wrapping text around objects
• Creating and managing colour
• Designing tables
• Integrating Photoshop and illustrator
• Pre-flight and packaging documents
• Saving and exporting from InDesign.
What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
The course concentrates on building a document layout from scratch and explores layout and typographical controls, working with layers and creating multipage documents
On completion of the course you should be able to:
• Create, open and save an InDesign Document
• Navigate through Adobe InDesign workspace confidently
• Layout text and images in a document
• Format and style short and long texts
• Create swatches and apply colour
• Create tables
• Identify and find and replace errors in document
• Integrate with Photoshop and Illustrator
• Confidently hand-off projects to colleagues or external printers
• Save and export files in Indd, Idml and pdf formats.
What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?
No prior knowledge of InDesign is required, but an understanding of either Photoshop or Illustrator is desirable. You should be a competent computer user and know how to: launch an application, use drop-down menus, create, copy, save and retrieve files and be able to work confidently with the keyboard and mouse.
You should be able to follow simple written and verbal instructions. You should be able to use numbers and be able to do simple measurements and calculations.
How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?
This course will be delivered online, and will involve tutor presentation and class discussion. Student preparation and homework outside class times is strongly encouraged. To fully participate in this online class you will need:
- An email address
- A reliable internet connection
- A computer/laptop/tablet with a fully updated browser (preferably google chrome). Your device will need a microphone, and preferably a camera.
Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?
There are no other costs, however you will need to have access to the Adobe Cloud Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign).
When I've finished, what course can I do next?
You can develop your skills further in Designing for magazines and books with Adobe InDesign: stage 1, Designing for magazines and books with Adobe InDesign: stage 2, Adobe InDesign: stage 2.
