Course Info

Duration

2 Days

Class Size

Max 7 – 8

Course Times

9am to 4pm

Computers

Macs & PCs

After Course

Book included

Phone

9516 1715

Location

Level 7, 89 York St

Download

Course PDF

Price

$845 $795 if booked during January or February

InDesign Intro Course [CS3/ CS4]

Upcoming Classes | Course Outline

Course Description

This introductory class is instructor led with students learning how to use Adobe InDesign to it’s full potential by completing exercises producing stationery, brochures, magazine layouts and forms. Best practices relating to design and typography, as well as shortcuts, are emphasised.

Free 1 Gig USB

City Desktop Training provides students with a free 1 Gig USB Flash Drive with their first course, to be able to take their class files away with them.

What you will learn

During the 2 day InDesign Essentials course, the following topics are covered. See outline below for more indepth detail:

— InDesign's Interface
— Document Setup & Navigation
— Document Shortcuts
— Working with Text including Styles
— Working with Objects
— Working with Colour
— Designing Forms
— Creating Tables
— Importing Graphics
— Automation & Troubleshooting including Master Pages
— Preparing for Print & Exporting PDFs

 

Upcoming InDesign Courses

	January	February	March	April
InDesign Introduction	12 & 13 22 & 23	2 & 3 25 & 26	18 & 19	6 & 7 28 & 29
InDesign Advanced	29 & 30		12 & 13	22 & 23

 

Adobe InDesign CS3/ CS4 Course Outline

2 Day InDesign Essentials

Day one starts with familiarising with InDesign’s interface and investigating the many panels used to format and arrange your artwork ie. Info, Links, Layers, Align, Pages, Stroke, Swatches, Text Wrap, Tabs and Character and Paragraph Styles.

A business card, letterhead and an A5 flyer is used as examples to work with multiple images, create reversals, tints and rotate type. Using the Character, Transform and Control panels, you can quickly set accurate specs for your document elements. Navigating your page(s) effectively and learning to use the appropriate tools is also part of the first session. Other techniques and procedures learnt on day one include the following: creating, reshaping and positioning frames. Entering, editing and formatting text, understanding the importance of leading, tracking, kerning, correct typesetting (ie en, em dashes) and baseline shift controls, importing images, resizing and manipulating. As part of the brochure exercise, a form is completed, using tabs, tab leaders and the Align panel.

Day two of the InDesign course, students produce a multiple page document which demonstrates the features that replace repetitive tasks, and are a must for effective editing, such as Master Pages, Auto Page Numbering, Character and Paragraph Styles, Find/ Change, Spell checking, Paragraph Rules, Hyphenation, Defining and applying colours and Text Frame options, etc.

The last session looks at preparing your document to send to your printer using the Preflight and Package commands, managing your fonts and linked images and exporting your document to various types of PDFs.

Other areas included are:
Working with panels effectively, InDesign Preferences for the application and document.

InDesign Course Specifics

InDesign’s Interface

Using panels, The toolbox, Save Workspace, Contextual menus, Preferences: General, Units & Increments

Document Setup & Navigation

New Document options: Facing Pages, Gutter, Bleed, Slug, Linking, Save Preset, Guides: rulers, margins and columns, Views and magnification choices: Fit Page, Fit Spread, Zoom, Exact %, Ctrl/Cmd+space, Scrolling and navigating: Alt/ Option, Navigator, Pages panel, Closing, saving and opening files: Reverting, Tiling, Double window view, Layers to easily identify page elements

Document Shortcuts in InDesign

Shift selecting, Marqueeing, Select All, Shift to constrain horizontal/ vertical movement, Shift to constrain resizing, Alt/ Opt for duplicating, Paste in Place, Arrow/ nudge keys, larger increments, Toolbox shortcuts, Hidden Characters & Preview mode, Display Performance Quality

Working with Text

Entering, selecting, editing and formatting text: kerning, tracking, leading and baseline shift, selecting word, line, paragraph and all text, Paragraph formatting: indents, Space Before/ After, Hyphenation. Using the Character, Paragraph and Transform panels, Rotate text, creating reversals, gradients, Shortcuts for increasing/ decreasing text, Setting text frame controls: text inset, vertical alignment, multiple columns, Working with text flow: autoflow, semi-autoflow, Placeholder text, Inserting special characters, Auto Page Numbering, em dashes & glyphs, Text wrapping around images, Paragraph rules: above and below, offset

Working with Objects

Rectangle Frame Tool vs Rectangle Tool, Creating shapes, starbursts, lines and formatting. Selecting, moving, duplicating, and resizing objects, Transforming options, Arranging, Grouping and accessing objects, Step & Repeat, Aligning, distributing and grouping objects, Object Styles

Working with Colour

Colour modes, Swatch libraries, Creating tints & Gradient swatches, Strokes and fills, Transparency

Designing Forms in InDesign

Setting tabs and tab leaders, Repeat and Clear, Check boxes

Tables

Creating, Converting Text to Table, Formatting Rows, Columns & Cells, Header Cells, Merging / Splitting Cells

Importing Graphics

Placing artwork: EPS, tifs & native image files, Info panel to determine resolution, RGB vs CMYK, Modifying placed images, fitting and resizing images, proportionally, Links panel, relinking & embedding graphics

Automation & Troubleshooting in InDesign

Master Pages: defining, applying, and activating Master elements on document pages, Auto page numbering, Paragraph Styles: New based on selection, Basing a style on another style, redefining a style, clearing local formatting overrides, assigning shortcuts, Loading paragraph & character styles from another document, Character Styles, Find/ Change: Characters, invisible characters, Spell checking: Dictionaries, Autocorrect and Dynamic Spelling, Eyedropper tool

Printing / Exporting to PDF

Printing a document and print options, Print Presets, Preflight & Packaging, Exporting to PDF and PDF options