Building Great Templates with InDesign, Part 1

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Creating a document in InDesign that can be used to build other documents, often by other people, requires an understanding of a wide range of InDesign features. In this three-part tutorial, we’ll explore the features you should know to set up a great template, how to set up files properly, and how to make use of templates you’ve acquired elsewhere.

Part 1: First, we’ll learn all about templates, what they are, how to create, customize and use. Then we’ll check out a few popular template resources to download for free, or purchase a pre-made template to customize for your own use. We’ll find out that these free or purchased templates may not suit your exact needs or be built with the correct tools. They are useless until you customize them for your own brand.

In this session, you’ll learn:

  • What is a template? What’s the difference between an InDesign document (.indd) and a InDesign template (.indt)
  • What InDesign elements should go into a template, and what should stay out?
  • How to build a document from the ground up that others can use
  • How to save an existing document as a template
  • Where to find quality templates
  • How to find and use free templates from Adobe Stock
  • Customize a template for your own brand

Learn about Part 2 here.

Designing for Social Media

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It’s a fast-paced social media world we’re living in, and “good” is not good enough these days to catch people’s attention. In this fast-paced session, we’ll demonstrate some of our favorite techniques for making the good look great, whether you’re using desktop or mobile apps.

10 Essential Illustrator Productivity Tips

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Level-up your illustrator skills by learning how to enhance objects and type in ways that add complexity, flexibility and fun. In this session, we’ll share some of our favorite tricks for letting Illustrator do the heavy-lifting while getting beautiful results. We’ll explore:
  • Appearance Panel and Graphic Styles skills
  • Symbols and Brushes
  • Creative problem-solving tips

Improving Cruddy Vector and Image Graphics

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Your client or boss just sent you a bunch of images for your marketing campaign… and they’re terrible! Learn how to use the secret powers of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat to improve your graphics.

Topics include:

  • How to improve grainy low light mobile phone images
  • What to do with low resolution and pixelated images
  • Tips for improving poor quality stock photos
  • How to fix stock vector graphics with blend modes that won’t render in InDesign
  • How to match color tones across all assets
  • Choosing the right ICC profiles for image assets

Next Steps in InDesign Accessibility 2021

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This is part 2 of our full-day accessibility tutorial. (See this link for Part 1.) In this session, we’ll explore:

  • Managing tables, images, and forms
  • Exporting PDF documents (including best practices for settings and presets)

InDesign Styles and Masters Deep Dive, Part 2

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In Part 1 of this two-part tutorial, we learned about master pages and creating solid and flexible documents. Now, in Part 2, you’ll learn all about styles and masters.

Everyone knows that using styles in InDesign is key for efficient formatting of text and objects in a document. Not only do they save time and allow us to format content quickly and efficiently, but they also facilitate easily making changes in a document as well. Let’s not forget that they’re also a requirement if you want to take advantage of some powerful features in InDesign that help you to automate tasks. With styles however, there’s a lot more beneath the surface that can help you take your text formatting to the next level by automating specific formatting within a paragraph.

Part 2 includes:

  • Setting up your paragraph, character, and object styles
  • Leveraging Nested Styles to apply text formatting
  • Isolating and formatting text using GREP Styles
  • Understand ingthe order of operation when using automated and manually applied styles
  • Thinking creatively with styles

Gradients and Blends in Illustrator

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If you have ever tried to make a great blend (or gradient, or vignette, or whatever you want to call it) in Illustrator, you know you need this session! We’ll go beyond the basics here to explore the many different ways to blend objects and add gradients, and you’ll learn how to use blends to create incredible (and unexpected) shapes and designs.

Making Killer Infographics

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If you’ve ever tried to build an infographic, you know that telling a story through visual design is not as straightforward or intuitive as it might seem! This focused session will explore:

  • How to break down your project atomically, step by step
  • Let’s get clear: what is an infographic (and what isn’t!)
  • What works and what definitely doesn’t when it comes to at-a-glance design
  • Examples of amazing and inspirational infographics we can all learn from

10 Essential Photoshop Productivity Tips

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Join us in this information-packed session where we’ll share our best Photoshop tips and power shortcuts for designers!

In this session, you will learn timesaving techniques, little-know features, and better ways to work with the tools that you already use. This session will leave you saying, “I wish I knew that years ago!”

In this session, you’ll learn:

  • Time-saving techniques
  • Little-know (hidden) Photoshop features
  • How to make blending modes work for you

Accessibility Fundamentals for InDesign 2021

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“Access to information is a fundamental human right”
—George Kerscher, DAISY Consortium

Ensuring that the PDF files you produce are accessible to all is not only a good idea, it’s the right thing to do! In this session, learn about what accessibility and “Section 508” means and how you can ensure that the PDF documents that you create from Adobe InDesign are accessible to everyone!

This tutorial is split into five individual sessions. In this session, we will journey through setting up an InDesign file for accessibility and giving your document the best chance for “out of the box” accessibility.

Topics include:

  • How to build an InDesign document the right way
  • Controlling content order
  • Using features that already exist in InDesign