InDesign Fundamentals: An Introduction to InDesign CC

Professional designers who are new to InDesign.

• Practical working knowledge of computers and basic Mac OS X or Windows skills
• Photoshop Fundamentals: An Introduction to Photoshop class or equivalent experience is recommended.

 

Lesson 1: Introducing the Workspace

• Looking at the workspace
• Working with panels
• Customizing the workspace
• Changing the magnification of a document
• Navigating through a document
• Using context menus
• Modifying Interface preferences
• Exploring on your own

Lesson 2: Getting to Know InDesign

• Viewing guides
• Preflighting as you work
• Adding text
• Working with styles
• Working with graphics
• Working with objects
• Working with object styles
• Viewing the document in Presentation mode
• Exploring on your own

Lesson 3: Setting Up a Document and Working with Pages

• Creating and saving custom document settings
• Creating a new document
• Switching between open InDesign documents
• Working with master pages
• Applying master pages to document pages
• Adding new document pages
• Rearranging and deleting document pages
• Changing the size of pages
• Adding sections to change page numbering
• Overriding master page items on document pages and placing text and graphics
• Viewing the completed spread
• Exploring on your own

Lesson 4: Working with Objects

• Working with layers
• Creating and modifying text frames
• Creating and modifying graphics frames
• Adding metadata captions to graphics frames
• Placing and linking graphics frames
• Changing the shape of a frame
• Wrapping text around a graphic
• Modifying the shape of frames
• Transforming and aligning objects
• Selecting and modifying grouped objects
• Creating a QR code
• Finishing up

Lesson 5: Flowing Text

• Flowing text into an existing frame
• Flowing text manually
• Creating text frames while flowing text
• Flowing text automatically
• Creating threaded frames automatically
• Resizing text frames automatically
• Adding a jump line page number
• Exploring on your own

Lesson 6: Editing Text

• Finding and changing a missing font
• Entering and importing text
• Finding and changing text and formatting
• Checking spelling
• Editing text by dragging and dropping
• Using the Story Editor
• Tracking changes

Lesson 7: Working with Typography

• Adjusting vertical spacing
• Changing fonts and type styles
• Fine-tuning columns
• Changing paragraph alignment
• Creating a drop cap
• Adjusting letter and word spacing
• Adjusting line breaks
• Setting tabs
• Adding a rule above a paragraph

Lesson 8: Working with Color

• Managing color
• Defining printing requirements
• Creating and applying colors
• Working with gradients
• Creating a tint
• Creating a spot color
• Applying colors to text and objects
• Using advanced gradient techniques

Lesson 9: Working with Styles

• Creating and applying paragraph styles
• Creating and applying character styles
• Nesting character styles inside paragraph styles
• Creating and applying object styles
• Creating and applying table and cell styles
• Globally updating styles
• Loading styles from another document

Lesson 10: Importing and Modifying Graphics

• Adding graphics from other programs
• Comparing vector and bitmap graphics
• Managing links to imported files
• Updating revised graphics
• Adjusting display quality
• Working with clipping paths
• Working with alpha channels
• Importing native Adobe graphics files
• Using a library to manage objects
• Using Adobe Bridge to import graphics

Lesson 11: Printing and Exporting

• Preflighting files
• Packaging files
• Creating an Adobe PDF proof