InDesign: An Introduction

Adobe InDesign is an industry-standard layout and publishing application. Its use continues to grow as organisations seek to project their brand and materials in more engaging, professional and creative ways.

This beginners fundamentals training course will cover the key functionality of Adobe InDesign CC, as well as techniques for laying out text and graphics for professional publication.

On this InDesign short course you'll gain an appreciation of the fundamentals of typography, page layout and other page design principles and learn how to apply these principles using InDesign, gaining hands-on experience in the art of successful page layout.

You should have good working knowledge of the Windows or Macintosh operating system.

Please note: you must have your own copy of InDesign installed to enrol in our online course.

Who is it for?

If you are responsible for design and marketing, setting up your own business or creating online projects, this course is for you.

Timetable

This course takes place one evening a week for 10 consecutive weeks.

City Short Courses follow the academic year, delivering courses over three terms. These include:

• Autumn - October
• Spring - January
• Summer - April

Benefits

• Access to Adobe InDesign software
• Taught by professionals in the field
• Awarded a City, University of London certificate

• The InDesign working environment: how to open & view files, make use of the pasteboard, manipulate the document window.
• Toolbox: the selection tool, colour controls, hand tool, rotation tool, the direct selection tool, eyedropper tool.
• Navigation: how to move around your document using the pages palette, view menu, page keys, layout menu, scrolling and the navigator palette.
• Layers: how to use and re-position layers, lock and organise layers.
• Constructing a new document: including how to change document preferences and create a custom start up page.
• Master Pages: creation, editing, footers, headers, guides, grids, application and overriding master page items on document pages.
• Type: creating, colouring, editing, alignment plus essential typography tips and techniques.
• Duplicating items.
• Graphic Frames: Modifying graphics within frames, manipulating and editing the frame and its contents both separately and together.
• Text Frames: creating, importing, editing, overflowing text, dynamic spelling, spell checking text, creating text in columns and the manipulation of text frames.
• Creating solid objects.
• Anchor Points: Understanding Bezier curves, selecting, manipulating, adding and deleting anchor points and their direction lines.
• Drawing shapes with pre-set tools.
• Wrapping text around a graphic object.
• Styles: paragraph, character and object styles.
• Aligning objects.
• Colour: understanding CMYK colour and the Pantone Solid Colour system for print. RGB colour for the web. Creating colours in the Swatches palette, applying colours to objects and using stroke & fill attributes. Also how to view the separate print/ink plates on screen.
• Working with gradients: creating, editing and adjusting gradients.
• Transparency: changing the opacity of a solid object or graphic, applying blending modes, creating drop shadows.
• Printing & exporting: PDFs, pre-flight, packaging files for printers and fixing problems.
• Considering design in page layouts: what do graphics say?; face-ism ratio; the golden ratio; grid-based design.

You will be awarded an official City, University of London certificate if you attend at least 70 per cent of the classes. The course is not formally accredited.

Assessment

There is no formal assessment as part of this course.

Working knowledge of the Windows or Macintosh operating system.

English requirements

Applicants must be proficient in written and spoken English.