City Lit Pro: Adobe InDesign intensive

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 to 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.

Participants who will attend the full course will receive a City Lit certificate of attendance electronically for their CV or CPD records. The certificate will show your name, course title and dates of the course you have attended.

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?

You will be taught using a range of techniques including workshops, short lectures, demonstrations, and by completing practical exercises on Computer. Computers are provided for each student with all the necessary software installed. Student preparation and homework outside class times is strongly encouraged. Notes will be provided.

Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?

No costs. Should you wish to practice outside class time, you will need to have access to your own licensed Adobe® Creative Cloud software.

Pen and notepad for note taking. You may also find that having a couple of sheets of A4 paper and a ruler to hand would also be useful. Handouts for this course will be provided electronically and are best viewed in Adobe Acrobat Reader (or, if you have full Creative Cloud, Acrobat DC) so may want to have Acrobat on your computer.

As a City Lit student, you may be entitled to student discount on Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Please visit the Adobe website Creative Cloud for education webpage for full details.

When I've finished, what course can I do next?

Please click here to view our courses in the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: Use of Third-Party Software
This course might require you to either use your own personal account or create an account for the purposes of this course. City Lit cannot accept any responsibility for any failings of the third party or provide technical support. Whilst using the software you will be responsible for abiding by the providers terms and conditions and maintaining your own work.