Adobe InDesign Beginners and Intermediates Course

This course is aimed at beginners and intermediates thus it is necerssary that you have good general computer skills. Additionally it will be helpful if you have some previous knowledge of design software, particularly Adobe Photoshop for image resizing and colour correction.

» See also the Designer Trainers Adobe Photoshop Beginners course

» See also the Designer Trainers Adobe Photoshop Beginners and Intermediates course

This Beginners and Intermediates InDesign course covers the following areas:

Day 1: Introduction to Adobe InDesign and desktop publishing

1) Creating a new InDesign Document

• Starting a new document - setting size and margins, columns and other options
• Using guidelines to help control layout
• Modifying document properties
• Saving a document and organising files

2) Tools & InDesign Basics

• Overview of the main tools and palettes in InDesign
• Selection Tools : Selection, Direct Selection
• Shape tools & Frames
• Creating shapes (rectangle, ellipse, star or polygon)
• Setting precise shape dimensions
• Set fill colour
• Set line colour and line weight
• Line tool
• Create a line, set line weight and colour
• Set line style and arrows
• Zooming in and out
• Zoom tool, keyboard shortcuts, menu
• Moving around the document
• Floating palettes : opening and hiding palettes

3) Shapes and Selected Objects

• Using the Control Palette to set size and position of a selected object
• Shape Modifying (transform, rotate, scale)
• Duplicating selected objects
• Grouping objects
• Locking objects
• Align & Distribute
• Create multiple identical objects with equal spacing using Step & Repeat

4) Pictures and Graphics

• Place a picture on the page
• (discussion of correct file types, image resolution and image size)
• Placing an image inside a frame
• Resizing the frame (cropping the image)
• Resizing the image
• Resizing both image and frame
• Changing image position within the frame
• Using the Control palette to modify image or frame properties
• Putting a border around an image
• Checking linked images with the Links palette and Info palette

5) Colours

• Choosing RGB, CMYK or Pantone Spot colours
• Mix a new colour and save in the Swatches palette
• Create a tint of a swatch
• Make a new gradient swatch and apply to object
• Modify the gradient with gradient palette and gradient tool.
• Editing and deleting swatches

6) Text & Type

• Text Tools
• Create a text frame
• Type in the frame or add placeholder text
• Importing a text document (changing import options)
• Basic typography (Leading, Kerning, Tracking, Indents, etc.)
• Set type colour
• Threading type between two or more text frames
• Setting options for the text frame
• Changing the number of columns of text in a text frame
• Checking Spelling
• Using with Text Wrap to wrap text around a picture or shape
• Using the Eyedropper tool to pick up attributes from another block of text

8) Pages

• Adding new pages, organising pages, deleting pages
• Basic overview of how a master page works and adding content to the master page

9) Create a small document

• Create a small simple document such as a single page newsletter, with text and images. This could be a simple document of your own - e.g. a poster, leaflet, postcard, magazine advert, simple newsletter or other small document.

Day 2: Intermediate Adobe InDesign training

Use the techniques below to create typical documents which you will normally produce.This is a typical course outline but may be modified to suit your requirements.

1) Pages & Master Pages

• Working with multi-page documents
• Creating a spread of 2 or more pages
• Creating Master Pages
• Applying a master page to document pages
• Editing and duplicating master pages
• Automatic page numbering

2) Working with Text Frames and Type

• Threading text between text frames
• Viewing and changing text threading
• Using the Story Editor to edit text
• Inline graphics (using graphics inside a line of type )
• Using Find & Replace to change or replace repeated text elements in a document

3) Typography

• More text formatting and typography:
• drop caps, baseline shift, paragraph rules, keep options
• Using the Control palette, the Character palette or Paragraph palette to format type
• Controlling line breaks, paragraph breaks and column breaks
• Glyphs and special characters e.g. • © ™  etc.
• Showing hidden characters (paragraphs, tabs, spaces, etc.) within the text
• Tabs - hanging indents and tabbed lists
• Bullets and Numbering options

4) Style Sheets

• Style Sheets to format type ( font, colour, alignment, indents, tabs, etc.)
• Character and Paragraph Style Sheets
• Applying and editing Style Sheets
• Importing styles from other documents

5) Tables

• Designing tables
• Formatting cell colours and cell stroke properties
• Resizing cells, merging cells, adding or removing rows or columns
• Importing table data from spreadsheet documents
• Creating a table from existing text
• Formatting text, setting cell inset spacing
• Adding images to table

6) Objects, Images and Colours

• Adding a drop shadow to an image or other object
• Transparency and blending effects between objects
• Automatically loading a predefined set of colours with every new document
• Using a clipping path in an image file

7) Layers

• Using Layers to organise images, graphics and text
• Creating, deleting, and changing stacking order
• Visibility and locking layers
• Moving selected objects between layers

8) Printing and Output options

• Preflight
• Checking images, fonts and colours used in the document
• Package
• Collecting together all files and fonts needed for printing
• PDF creation basics

9) Create a document of your own design

• Create a multi-page document of your own design or based on your own examples.

Prices start at £400 (including discounts) but vary for on-site training. Please 'request information' for pricing specific to your requirements.

Design Training provides one-to-one and small group computer training courses for professional design software in Birmingham, the Midlands and around the UK.

Most courses can be customised to your requirements and intermediate or advanced courses will usually be based around working with your own projects and designs. Whether you and your organisation require training on-site at your own office, or you would prefer to come to our training centre, we will help you with your training requirements. Design Training offer you the following:

• Short intensive courses for design software
• One to one training and training for small groups
• Custom courses - tailored to your requirements available for most design software
• On-site computer training - delivered at your offices in Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Warwick and Midlands areas. On-site training can be arranged with trainers around the UK including in London, Yorkshire, Manchester and Bristol
• Training for one or two people are available at our premises in South Birmingham (PC based training)
• Workplace training on all systems.
• Experienced trainers with good design skills. Certified trainers are available for some courses
• One month of after-training support

Design Software Training Courses

Design Training specialises in short courses for professional web design, image editing, desktop publishing and graphic design software (including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign).

Training Locations

Most of the computer training courses are available at client's premesis - on-site in Birmingham and Midlands areas and around the UK, including : Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Bromsgrove, Worcester, Driotwich, Malvern, Hereford, Stourbridge, Kidderminster, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Telford, Stafford, Shrewsbury, Lichfield, Derby, Tamworth, Nuneaton, Coventry, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Stratford upon Avon, Evesham, Banbury, Oxford, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, etc.. Many of these courses may also be arranged with trainers in other areas of the UK, including Yorkshire, Manchester and London.

Additionally, most of the design courses are aso available for one or two trainees at our premises in Cofton Hackett, South Birmingham.

Customised Courses

Design Training offers customised courses for most applications, and most intermediate and advanced courses are intended to be customised to include working with some of your own designs and projects. Also, Design Training can help you with specific projects - if you are working on a project, training can be based on doing all the things you need to achieve the end result of a finished project.

Design Training offers intensive short courses in the following areas:

• Web design courses
• Photo editing courses
• Desktop publishing courses
• Graphic design courses

If you are interested in design courses and training for you and your business please 'request information'.