InDesign Training - Beginners

Course Dates

Click below to book your place or call us on 0800 156 0777


RRP: £495.00
Web Special: £450.00

Maximum Class Size

In order to ensure every student gets the most out of the course we have a maximum class size of:

London

8 Delegates

York

5 Delegates

Whether your designing for offline or online publishing you want to get it right and our InDesign training courses enable you to do exactly that.

InDesign has grown to become the most widely used desktop publishing tool on the market today, yet the number of people who only use 10% of its features is staggering. It's not because they don't need the rest, it's just that they don't really know how to use them or what they do.

About this InDesign Training Course

InDesign Getting Started is aimed at users who are new to the InDesign package, teaching best practice right from the start and allowing you to make the most of InDesign's powerful array of tools.  

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The course is made up of 2 days of instructor led InDesign training which can be completed either at our London or York facilities or your own location. This is then built on through 12 months access to our learning management system containing video tutorials, samples, exercise files and support forums.

The Instructors

Our InDesign trainers have years of experience using InDesign in a publishing environment and have all attained both Adobe Certified Expert and Certified Instructor status on the package.

The Audience 

This InDesign course is suitable for anybody who wants to learn to use InDesign but has no previous experience. If you already experienced with InDesign you might find our Advanced InDesign Training Course more appropriate.

If you are unsure which InDesign courses are most suitable then why not try our free InDesign Skills Test to help you test your current skills.

The Prerequisites

This course is a beginners InDesign course. You should however be comfortable using a computer to perform functions such as copy and paste, and opening applications and files. You should also be comfortable using the internet, for example for browsing and interacting with websites.

InDesign Training Course - Topics

The following modules are covered in this course:

Introduction

  • What is Desktop Publishing
  • Why InDesign
  • What you will learn

InDesign Interface

  • Overview of the interface
  • Creating customised Workspaces
  • Organising Panels
  • Customising Menus
  • Changing Default Settings

Document Creation

  • Creating a New Document
  • Bleed, Slug and Margins
  • Facing Pages
  • Columns and Gutter

Frames and Shapes

  • What are frames
  • Creating frames
  • Moving frames
  • Aligning frames
  • Sizing and positioning
  • Rounded corners
  • Anchoring frames
  • Rotating and skewing
  • Creating frames from text

Working with Text

  • Creating text frames
  • Using placeholder text
  • Inserting special characters
  • Glyphs
  • Threading text frames
  • Viewing threads
  • The Story Editor
  • Text frame options, inset spacing etc..
  • Hyphenation
  • Importing from Word

Formatting Text

  • Leading
  • Kerning & tracking
  • Drop caps
  • Baseline shift
  • Justification & Alignment
  • Uppercase, lowercase, sentence case & title case
  • Indents
  • Bullets
  • Formatting Bullets

Working with Objects

  • Grouping and ungrouping
  • Change object shape
  • Rotating a spread
  • Arranging objects
  • Layers Panel

Images

  • Using mini bridge
  • Different file formats
  • Placing images
  • Frame Fitting Options
  • Text wrap options
  • Resizing and positioning images
  • Select v direct select
  • Content Grabber (and how to turn it off)
  • Display performance
  • Clipping paths

Layout

  • Creating layouts
  • Guides and smart guides
  • The gap tool
  • Liquid Layout
  • Alternate Layout
  • Using the page tool
  • Live distribute
  • Merging frames
  • Compound shapes

Masters and Pages

  • Working with masters
  • Creating masters
  • Importing masters
  • Applying masters
  • Master options
  • Page numbering
  • Numbering and sections
  • Text threads in masters

Colours

  • Understanding Colours: CMYK, RGB, Pantone etc..
  • Creating colours
  • Saving colours as swatches
  • Sampling colors from images
  • Exporting and importing colours
  • Applying colours to strokes and fills
  • Creating gradients
  • Saving gradients as swatches
  • Applying gradients to items

Gradient Feather

  • Applied to what?
  • Linear v radial
  • Angle and location

Tables

  • Creating a new table
  • Convert text to table
  • Strokes and fills
  • Alternating row and column strokes
  • Adding rows and columns
  • Deleting rows and columns
  • Merge and unmerge

Other Effects

  • Applied to what?
  • Drop & Inner Shadow
  • Inner & Outer Glow
  • Bevel and Emboss
  • Satin
  • Transparency

Basic Styles

  • Character styles
  • Paragraph styles
  • Style Priority
  • Creating styles
  • Applying and removing styles
  • Overrides
  • Redefining styles
  • Importing Styles
  • Removing unused styles
  • Nested Styles

Preflighting

  • Why preflighting
  • Detecting errors
  • Identify & correct errors
  • Custom profiles

Output

  • Packaging all files
  • PDF Presets (print ready, small size etc.)
  • Including printers marks / bleed
  • Compression
  • Export to interactive PDF
  • Page transitions (eg: fade, blind, etc.)

Hands on Lab

During the course delegates will complete hands on exercises at each stage. On day 2 we also undertake one large final project bringing together all of the skills covered during the course. This approach gives delegates the opportunity to embed the skills, ask questions and clarify areas of uncertainty before leaving the classroom.

Previous Feedback From Our InDesign Classes

We thought you might like to see what some previous delegates thought of our InDesign classes:

"Good intro - I feel confident going back to the office and using this software now. The instructor was very good - enthusiastic, and went at just the right pace."
Communications Officer, Houses of Parliament

"The content was good and having a whole morning on the second day for practical work was invaluable. The instructor was clear in his presentation; patient with lack of comprehension and, thorough in covering the subject. The pace was fast enough to maintain interest while not too quick to lose you."
Production Manager, OFSTED

"Very impressed.  Clear, concise and accurate"
Marketing Manager, Royal British Legion

"The center was friendly, comfortable - a good space to learn in. The instructor was helpful and supportive - answering questions directly without going around the bend on answers."
Creative Assistant, The Walt Disney Company

If you are looking for first class InDesign training that works then call us on 0800 156 0777.