Have you ever seen a terrific-looking brochure or newsletter and wondered how it was made? Chances are the designer used Adobe InDesign CC, the industry-standard desktop publishing software now available through the Creative Cloud.
In each lesson, you will learn an important aspect of InDesign CC and prepare a range of print and online products for a fictional company. You will get dozens of files to work with, including a partially completed InDesign document used to start each lesson. Then you will use the downloaded graphics, images, fonts, and other content to complete the project. To check your work or troubleshoot any problems you encounter, you will always get a copy of the finished InDesign project file.
Lesson by lesson, you will discover how the program features relate to producing actual usable documents. You will explore the best ways to create different types of material, how to reuse items such as colors and artwork, and how to produce publications for different page sizes and devices. You will come away knowing how to use this popular page layout software to design and create professional-quality letterhead, business cards, brochures, forms, interactive PDF files, an eBook, and more.
Doug Sahlin is a professional photographer, author, graphic designer, and instructor living in Venice, Florida. He was President of Superb Images, a wedding and event photography company for three years. He creates fine art images of the flora, fauna, and iconic landscapes and seascapes found on the west coast of Florida. Sahlin has written over twenty how-to books, many of them bestsellers on Amazon.
The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.
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Lesson 1
Making Your Way Around InDesign CC
Wouldn't it be terrific if you could use one program to create all the different types of print materials—such as letterhead, forms, and even brochures and business cards? Well, you can. This first lesson introduces the different types of content you can produce with InDesign's workspace and tools. And then you will start working on your first project—a logo for a fictional business.
Setting Up a New Document
This lesson focuses on starting and saving a new print document. What's one of the most common types of print documents? If you said "letterhead," you would be right and well on your way to this lesson's project. By the end of the lesson, you will know how to choose settings for a new file, add background images, and organize your content to create a custom letterhead.
Organizing Objects on a Layout
Organization is a key ingredient in successful work of any kind, and it's critical to successfully using InDesign. This lesson introduces organizing documents in two ways. In the process, you will complete three projects: a sheet of address stickers, a sheet of business cards, and a reusable business card template.
Setting Up a Multipage Document
Many of your projects will use multiple pages with different layouts. Designing a catalog layout is the perfect way to learn these skills, and that's what this lesson focuses on. You will see how to add a graphic into an existing frame, as well as how to add content instantly using a file called a snippet.
Adding, Editing, and Threading Text
Managing text in precise and interesting ways is one of the big advantages of working with InDesign rather than a word-processing program. In this lesson, you will start a two-page brochure project that will take you two lessons to complete.
Importing Graphics and Images
The two key elements in any print project are, of course, text and images. This lesson concludes your two-page brochure project. You will learn different techniques for working with images, such as adding them to the page, adjusting their positions, and coordinating their sizes.
Drawing and Working With Shapes
You might be surprised to learn that InDesign provides you with some of the same sophisticated drawing tools that you will find in Adobe Illustrator. In this lesson, you will learn how to work with some of the drawing tools to design a poster for a fashion show.
Managing and Applying Color
Did you know that your eyes can see over 16 million different colors? It's true! Fortunately, you don't have to work with that many colors in InDesign. In this lesson, you will learn the best methods for choosing, naming, and organizing colors for your greeting card project.
Designing Tables and Creating Forms
When you need to display easy-to-read information in your publication, it's time to use a table. InDesign offers numerous tools for designing and formatting tables while ensuring your content coordinates with other documents. You will see how this works in this lesson when you build a table for an invoice form.
Storing Text and Color Information
Recycling doesn't just apply to physical items. In this lesson, you will learn how to use recycling in InDesign to complete a newsletter project. As you modify colors and styles from previous lessons to create new styles, you will also reuse a lot of the tools and skills you learned in previous lessons.
Creating and Distributing a Complex Document
InDesign provides many options for exporting, reusing, and printing a document. In this lesson, you will design a postcard using special fonts, colors, and image layout features. By the time you finish, you will know how to export a publication and print directly from your desktop.
Working with Color Separations, Special Layouts, and E-Books
In the final lesson, you will test InDesign's versatility. First, you will use a two-color version of the business cards used previously to delve into color separations—a common method of preparing a file for a professional print shop. Finally, you will round out the course by creating an e-book.
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