Learning Adobe InDesign

InDesign icon

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and typesetting program used to create books, brochures, magazines, and more.

Adobe provides a series of online InDesign tutorials, complete with instructions, videos, and small sample projects. These are good for beginners as well as users who need their skills refreshed. During your course, lab time may be provided during class to work on these tutorials with the instructor available for questions.

Recommended links for basic InDesign understanding are listed below with estimated time required to complete each tutorial. All together, the lessons listed here add up to more than 3.5 hours of training.

A. Getting Started (102 minutes)

  1. Getting started with InDesign (16 minutes)
  2. Adding text (20 minutes)
  3. Formatting text (18 minutes)
  4. Add and transform graphics (20 minutes)
  5. Color and effects (12 minutes)
  6. Editing and modifying content (16 minutes)

B. Page Layout (30 minutes)

  1. Adding pages (5 minutes)
  2. Margin and guides (5 minutes)
  3. Create custom guides (5 minutes)
  4. Working with master pages (5 minutes)
  5. Overriding master pages (5 minutes)
  6. Changing page sizes (5 minutes)

C. Working with Objects (35 minutes)

  1. Aligning and distributing objects (5 minutes)
  2. Resizing objects (4 minutes)
  3. Fitting graphics to frames (7 minutes)
  4. Rounding frame corners (2 minutes)
  5. When to link vs. embed graphics (3 minutes)
  6. Colorizing images (2 minutes)
  7. Layers (12 minutes)

D. More with Text (40 minutes)

  1. Copying text formatting (3 minutes)
  2. Wrapping text around shapes (10 minutes)
  3. Bulleted and numbered lists (10 minutes)
  4. Make a table (7 minutes)
  5. Format a table with styles (5 minutes)
  6. Insert images into tables (5 minutes)