InDesign 2022 Essential Training

Course details

InDesign is an essential tool for design firms, ad agencies, magazines, newspapers, book publishers, and freelance designers around the world. In this course, InDesign expert David Blatner presents a thorough explanation of the core features and techniques that make this powerful page layout application fun and easy to use. He provides a foundation upon which advanced skills and workflows can be built. David shows you how to navigate and customize the workspace, manage documents and pages, work with text frames and graphics, export and print finished documents, explore creating interactive documents, and much more. You can also use the example files and challenges that accompany the course to practice what David explains.

Concepts

Introduction

InDesign - Learn the fundamentals
Using the exercise files

Learning InDesign in 30 Minutes

Getting started
Adding or editing text
Adding or replacing graphics
Moving objects around
Printing and exporting a PDF

Creating a Document

New documents
Guides and measurements
Adding text frames
Typing and editing text
Choose a better workspace for editing
Applying basic text formatting
Importing graphics
Saving and reverting documents

Managing Pages

Inserting, deleting, and moving pages
Creating and applying parent pages
Overriding parent page items
Changing page size and margins
Setting bleed and slug guides
Adding page numbering

Text

Importing text
Threading text frames
Setting text frame attributes
Inserting special characters
Using the Story Editor
Checking spelling
Using Find Change
Putting text on a path

Graphics

Options when placing images
Using the Links panel
Editing graphics in their original app
Cropping and fitting graphics

Color and Transparency

Stroking and filling frames and paths
Transparency, drop shadows, and effects
Creating color swatches
The danger (and power) of unnamed colors
Creating and applying gradient swatches

Frames and Paths

Drawing path and frame shapes
Adjusting corner options
Creating text outlines

Managing Objects

Resizing and rotating objects
Duplicating objects and making grids
Moving objects above or below each other
Creating and controlling layers
Aligning and distributing
Understanding text wrap
Using anchored objects

Text Formatting

Applying advanced character formatting
Using Find Font
Applying formatting to a paragraph
Using drop caps
Adding rules (lines) above or below
Setting tabs and tab stops
Spanning and splitting paragraphs
Adding automatic bullets and numbers
Using Find Change for text formatting
Highlighting paragraphs with boxes

Styles

Creating and applying paragraph styles
Using character styles
Editing, clearing, and redefining styles
Using object styles

Tables

Creating a table
Adjusting rows and columns
Formatting a table
Formatting cells

Interactive Documents

Adding hyperlinks
Creating an interactive PDF
Exporting to the web with Publish Online

Package, Print, and Exporting

Packaging and preflight for output
Using the Print dialog box
Exporting a PDF

Conclusion

Next steps