InDesign Training For General Users

By Andrew Whiteman in Software on May 16th, 2008

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by Andrew Whiteman

Graphic designers are increasingly adopting InDesign as their preferred page layout tool and are constantly singing its praises. I’ve personally been conducted numerous conversion courses for designers keen to make the switch from QuarkXPress to InDesign. However, as a trainer, I have noticed another trend: the widespread adoption of InDesign by corporations keen to have their own staff produce in-house documents which have hitherto been outsourced. Running training courses for this new type of user accounts for a significant amount of the InDesign training that I offer.

When providing training courses for general users of InDesign, one has to do more than just explain the use of the tools and commands. As well as learning how to use program, delegates need to be given an insight into some of the basic techniques and principles of page layout, typography, colour specification and image manipulation.

InDesign is closely linked with postscript, an extremely accurate page description language used by numerous output devices. As such, it offers a great deal of accuracy in positioning and dimensioning elements on the page. Delegates should be made aware of the tools which make this accuracy possible. They should learn how to used guides and grids, including the baseline grid. They should at least come away knowing how to establish alignment and symmetry between the elements on the page.

The terms used in InDesign often refer back to the pre-electronic age of the typographic industry and is often mystifying to the average user. It’s important to explain these terms, perhaps by giving users some background information and, if possible, by making comparisons with similar features in software they already know. For example, we could compare the term “leading” in InDesign with line spacing in Microsoft Word.

Because InDesign offers so much flexibility in transforming imported images, your average user often gets carried away and ends up scaling images up or down by huge factors. It needs to be explained that scaling up or down by more than 10% or so is undesirable since this can cause artefacts to appear in the printed image.

Colour terminology can also confuse the general InDesign user. The key facts that people will need to be taught here are, firstly, the difference between the RGB and CMYK colour spaces; secondly, how the colour print job gets separated into the four different plates and, thirdly, the difference between process and spot colours.

InDesign is meant to be used to create high quality output. Regardless of their background, new users must have it drummed into them how important it is to pre-flight documents, resolve errors and then package the job ready to be sent off to a printing company. They also need to learn how to produce a high- resolution PDF file.

About the Author:

The author is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe InDesign training courses at their central London training centre.