April 21 2009 • 12:37 PM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 101
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- InDesignSecrets Videocast 001 stats and reactions
- InDesign 101: Helping Complete Newbies Get Started
- Hot Button Posts: Creating barcodes, Please check the spell checker
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Threshold
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News and special offers from our sponsors:
>> In-Tools has a special deal for InDesignSecrets fans: $20 off the price for either one of their InDesign plug-in bundles, InBook or InSefer, if you purchase from this special page on their site. The InBook Plug-in Pack is a suite of plug-ins that turn InDesign into an advanced automated pagination system for laying out books.The InSefer suite of plug-ins does the same for Hebrew publications. We talked about a few of the InBook plug-ins in the podcast, but the full list is here.
>> Mogo-Media’s InDesign Seminar Tour travels through five cities in the US in June 2009, presented by either David or Anne-Marie, with more dates in the fall. Deke McClelland’s Photoshop Channels and Masks seminar; and Paul Trani’s Getting Started with Flash seminars are also coming up! Use the AMCTIME09 discount code for 15% off registration off any of these.
>> Adobe Systems has extended the deadline for their CS4 upgrade special offer: Customers with earlier versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Studio, and Adobe Production Studio software can upgrade for the same price as those moving from CS3, up to a US$200 savings. The offer ends on April 30, 2009, in North America, after which they move to “tiered upgrade pricing.” You can see the special offer’s upgrade pricing chart at a glance, and then buy the upgrade at the Adobe.com store or your favorite reseller. (Sorry, no discount code—we tried!)
>> Mogo-Media’s InDesign Seminar Tour travels through five cities in the US in June 2009, presented by either David or Anne-Marie, with more dates in the fall. Deke McClelland’s Photoshop Channels and Masks seminar; and Paul Trani’s Getting Started with Flash seminars are also coming up! Use the AMCTIME09 discount code for 15% off registration off any of these.
>> Adobe Systems has extended the deadline for their CS4 upgrade special offer: Customers with earlier versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Studio, and Adobe Production Studio software can upgrade for the same price as those moving from CS3, up to a US$200 savings. The offer ends on April 30, 2009, in North America, after which they move to “tiered upgrade pricing.” You can see the special offer’s upgrade pricing chart at a glance, and then buy the upgrade at the Adobe.com store or your favorite reseller. (Sorry, no discount code—we tried!)
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Links mentioned in this podcast:
InDesignSecrets Videocast 001: Line Styles and GREP Styles
InDesignSecrets Videocast 001: Line Styles and GREP Styles
Barcodes in InDesign hot button post
Spell-checking hot button post
Follow InDesignSecrets on Twitter
Spell-checking hot button post
Follow InDesignSecrets on Twitter
One thing that I always liked about PageMaker, was that you could just click with the text tool and start typing.
When we switched to InDesign, I had to learn scripting so I could create text frames. Clicking just never worked… What an odd program. You’d think they’d make things easier not harder… Thanks for telling me how to do it!
I wish there was a Dreamweaver Secrets. I took a great seminar last year and cant find my notes. I feel like a moron for not being able to get text on the page, in the same way you mentioned someone new to layout programs in general. I wish everything was InDesign. sigh.
InDesign 101… For any software, there’s a core idea that the whole program is built from. It’s how the program “thinks.” Until a beginner grasps that, you can teach them a hundred features but nothing will “fit together” in the mind. They are just disconnect bits of information that people have to write down because they have nothing to relate them to and so no way to remember them. (Dead certain sign you’ve gone over someone’s head: they’re trying to write <em?everything you tell them.)
Most any InDesign neophyte has experience with Word or an equivalent, where the text comes first and the design comes later. My experience teaching ID to beginners is they usually expect ID to “think” like a word processor, which makes everything in the program into an “obscure feature” until the epiphany happens: “Oh! I have to think about layout first, then put the text where it’s supposed to go!”
Columns, gutters, frames, selection tools, and all the rest now have a context, so they start to make sense. The collage analogy is a good one, although I just describe good old mechanical page layout; in my experience everyone gets it even if they’ve never seen a drafting table.
Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, even Word and Excel all have their own “base concepts” without which they’re actually incomprehensible. Most “How To” beginner books miss because the author doesn’t give the reader that starting point.
InDesign 101… For any software, there’s a “core idea”. All apps have a have their own “base concepts”; which I call its philosophy.
Anne-Marie, David as a newbie to InDesign but not new to DTP, I would like to know how important preparing styles is at the beginning of a project in InDesign (book, magazines)
The advantage of early prep. and planning seems to be crucial. Do you agree that it is fundamental to understanding InDesign and the best way to get the most from the application?
All the Best
Cian