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Adobe InDesign is rapidly becoming the industry standard, and a new generation of designers have cut their teeth on it since it was introduced 6 years ago. InDesign’s use of precision typography, transparency, unlimited un-dos, and seamless Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat PDF are great reasons to switch.

I was an early adopter of InDesign and have kept up with newer features by teaching this software every semester. I’ve used it in my practice for stationery systems, book pages, covers, and jackets. My training sessions are all hands-on, project-based, and are taught at Pellissippi’s state-of-the-art Mac lab with 18 workstations, server space, three printers, and a projector. Each student works on their own Mac, following on-screen demonstrations on their own projects. Rather than explain every tool or and palette in detail, I walk students through a real-word project, explaining the features needed for that project. Each participant gets individual attention and leaves with a textbook and CD of take-away projects they can use to continue building professional skills.

Industry trends indicate that InDesign will continue to grow in popularity. If you or your company are interested in joining the growing InDesign community please give me a call at 865.660.1980. I’d be happy to talk about how I can help you make the switch to InDesign. Here are descriptions of the training sessions I offer.

InDesign: Getting Your Feet Wet This 6-hour course begins with students getting comfortable with InDesign using an existing file. After lunch students build their own real-world project using supplied text and graphics. Learn the most efficient ways to navigate through pages, place text, control type, import and size photos, and apply drop shadows and transparency effects. Click here to see a complete set of keyboard shortcuts.

InDesign: Diving Deeper If you’re already an InDesign user, you’ll be interested in this course. “Diving Deeper” is a 6-hour course focusing on managing larger projects and multi-piece campaigns with speed and efficiency. Skills include using project templates, paragraph styles, character styles, and libraries to avoid styling text and importing repeated elements by hand.

InDesign: Olympic-Speed Layout This 6-hour course focuses on techniques to further upgrade your InDesign skills. Save time with multiple master pages, learn to use “smart ligatures” and oldstyle figures in open type fonts, and more efficient work-flow. Also learn to use Preflight and Packaging to eliminate font problems, missing and improperly formatted graphics, and other problems that delay jobs and upset clients.