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InDesign Fundamentals

InDesign Fundamentals is a two-day course that will introduce you to the robust and easy-to-use design and layout features of this program. You'll leave this course knowing how to use InDesign to create documents of many types, from single page flyers, to infographics and multi-page publications. You'll be able to set styles for consistently branded material, and prepare documents to be handed off to a web team or commercial printers. If you're ready to streamline your publication development process, then InDesign Fundamentals is where to start.

Upcoming Classes

Saint Paul, MN


This course is currently offered as a Private Training. Please contact us to customize and schedule your individual or group event.

To conform with social distancing guidelines, we are only offering our classes online at this time.

Course Outline

InDesign Workspace

  • Looking at the workspace
  • Working with panels
  • Customizing the workspace
  • Navigating through a document
  • Working with Panels

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

Setting up a document and working with pages

  • Creating & 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 complete spread

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
  • Drawing lines and modifying arrowheads
  • Creating a QR code

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

Editing Text

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

Working with Typography

  • Adjusting vertical spacing
  • Working with fonts, type styles, and glyphs
  • Working with columns
  • Changing paragraph alignment
  • Creating a drop cap
  • Adjusting letter and work spacing
  • Adjusting line breaks
  • Setting tabs
  • Working with paragraph shading and rules

Working with Color

  • Managing color
  • Displaying images at full resolution
  • Proofing colors on-screen
  • Defining printing requirements
  • Creating and applying colors
  • Working with gradients
  • Creating a tint
  • Creating a spot color
  • Applying colors to text and objects
  • Working with gradients

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