InDesign 2024

Bootcamp Training Course

This bootcamp you will take you from an InDesign beginner to expert. You will complete a series of Real World publishing projects including an advertisement, a magazine, a corporate brochure, a novel, a movie poster, a receipe book, a restaurant menu, a travel guide, pitch deck, and much more.

Our instructors will lead you step-by-step through each project, teaching the correct workflow, how to master each tool and useful shortcuts to speed up your production. You will leave the course fully competent and able to use InDesign in a professional design environment.

What's Included

  • Certificate of Course Completion
  • Training Manual
  • FREE Class Repeat (valid for 6 months)
5 Days $1795.00
Authorised Training Centre

Live face-to-face instructor

No minimum class size - all classes guaranteed to run!

No prior experience of InDesign is needed. Training available on Mac and PC.

View our full range of Adobe InDesign courses.

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Detailed Course Outline

Learn the basics of viewing & navigating the InDesign interface and the fundamentals of working with text and frames.
  • Lecture: Concepts of Raster vs Vector
  • Lecture: How InDesign handles media
  • Lecture: Artificial Intelligence features in InDesign
  • Creating & Managing A New Document / Workspaces
  • Interface essentials / Key panels
  • Anatomy of a frame / Placeholder text / Properties
Combine formatted text and images in a single document and use new features to colorize and organize your design.
  • The ultimate way to get more professional-looking text
  • How frames and images work together / Frame tweaks
  • Work with swatches and extractions to create themes
  • Export your picture-perfect document fast
Learn about various image formats and how to work with them and their quality settings in InDesign.
  • Familiar with Image Formats
  • The various ways to resize and manipulate images
  • Using the Properties panel for more manipulations
  • A deeper focus on the Fitting function
Learn the fundamentals of laying out content in InDesign and the tools and techniques to speed it up.
  • Fundamental Typography in InDesign / Adobe Fonts
  • Creating and connecting text columns
  • Stylizing Quotes and credits
  • Getting artistic with creative typography
Learn how to use the Pages panel to create, navigate and management pages and spreads.
  • A Guide to Pages versus Parent Pages
  • Navigating and enhancing the Pages panel
  • Working with Spreads
  • How to create page numbers
  • Working with Layer Styles and Effects
Learn how to prep and export your InDesign projects in several different ways.
  • Your options for export out of InDesign
  • Working with simple PDF Exports
  • Projects / Templates / IDMLs and more
  • Save and Package your project for archive or transfer
Learn how InDesign works with graphics and the tools that create them.
  • InDesign versus Illustrator: Vector Artwork
  • Working with Fundamental Shapes
  • Working with Fundamental Shapes + Effects
  • Buttons / Lower 3rds / Custom Primary Elements
Learn how to prep and export your InDesign projects in several different ways.
  • Your options for export out of InDesign
  • Working with simple PDF Exports
  • Projects / Templates / IDMLs and more
  • Save and Package your project for archive or transfer
Learn to work with complex vector, layered content to enhance your designs. This includes maps and complex art.
  • Working with digital layered maps
  • Feathering edges of selection
  • Contracting and Expanding Selections
  • Fundamentals of Select and Mask
Learn about 2-Sided designs such as business cards, post cards and other projects and adding multiple levels of FX.
  • Simple 2-Sided Design work
  • Generated feature content in InDesign
  • Setting up document titling with blend effects
  • Borrowing elements from stock artwork
  • Great places to find free resources and more
Learn how to setup multi-panel projects and begin to layout document elements, preserving continuity.
  • Project planning and multi-panel documents
  • Creating themes: CMYK versus Spot Colors
  • Creating a brand/logo and working with groups
  • Working panel by panel and incorporating styles
  • Working dynamically to change vector imports
Continue exploring more advanced stylizing and layout features including batch editing and triggering next styles.
  • Working with manual and stylized drop caps
  • Creating text blurbs and triggering next styles
  • Working with hidden batching features for images & more
  • Working with Slugs / Slugs for internal and external use
  • Adding embedded authoring and copyright information
Learn how to setup, manage and sync color in InDesign and across many other Adobe applications.
  • The Primary Color Modes for most designers
  • Color and File Formats
  • Create Custom Shapes, Patterns, Swatches
  • Importing and Exporting Presets
Now let’s get serious and delve into creating the ultimate way to align text and objects.
  • Explore how to get the perfect-looking text and titles
  • More about text, paragraph alignments and grids
  • More ways to create and manage multi-column text
  • Working with Text Wrap and various types of artwork
Learn to create complex multi-level layouts that can be used for magazines, presentations, and other projects.
  • Create and saving layout templates
  • Multi-layered flowing elements in complex documents
  • In-line imagery and media
  • Managing Linked content / Relinking / Troubleshooting
Use Objects Styles with Captions to obtain a consistent look throughout your document.
  • Bridge with Metadata and batch searching functions
  • What are Object styles and what do they save?
  • Creating Object Styles from scratch or from an object
  • Applying Object styles to objects / Editing
  • What are Static versus Dynamic Captions?
  • Working with Dynamic Captions and Metadata
  • Updating and modifying captions
Add multiple grouped creative image objects with text and use batch editing techniques to modify their appearance.
  • More about grouped artwork
  • Troubleshooting batch loaded cursors
  • Editing Layered grouped objects from Parents to Pages
  • Layered targets and priority layering
Learn about some of the AI using Adobe services and how it impacts working with InDesign.
  • Features considered AI in InDesign
  • Working with Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express
  • Adobe Firefly to InDesign
  • Useful AI workflows
  • Future features requests in InDesign
Learn how to tables from scratch or import data into fun, creatively designed tables.
  • What you need to know about InDesign tables
  • Tab / Comma Delimited, Excel and more
  • Creating tables from scratch
  • Creating tables from text
  • Auto-creating tables from Excel
  • A Guide to Designing tables in InDesign
  • Troubleshooting / Tips and Tricks
Harness the power of InDesign’s GREP language system to perform difficult tasks in InDesign.
  • What exactly is GREP? How beginners should use it
  • A guide in GREP logic
  • Popular GREP phrases
  • GREP powered Paragraph Styles
Now let’s look into expanding the capabilities of InDesign by using popular Scripts and Extensions.
  • Understanding Scripts, Extensions & plugins
  • Most popular locations for scripts and extensions
  • Installing Scripts and Extensions
  • Implementing scripts in your projects
  • Troubleshooting scripts
  • The Plug-Ins Menu
Learn the power of Liquid Layouts and auto-styling to speed up re-design of content for different deliveries.
  • Different page sizes and adjustment
  • Social Media, Digital Marketing cross design
  • Comparative design and design Alternates
  • What are Liquid Layouts?
  • The Liquid Layout Page Rules
From print to digital publishing, we’ll learn some of the best ways to format your book, ebook for Epub, Kindle and more.
  • Setting up a book from scratch / Template Mentions
  • Page and Section/Chapter Setup
  • Front Matter: Table of Contents / Copyright / Title / Frontis
  • Body Formatting / Autoflow / Chapter page formatting
  • Back Matter: Acknowledgments, Index, Author
  • Indexes / References / Bulleted Lists / Quotes
  • Designing a Publication Cover for Print or Ebook
Learn how to use Book Projects to manage and organize multiple InDesign documents.
  • What can Book Projects do for you / Best case uses
  • Book Project creation and workflow
  • Setting Styles / Syncing book projects / Preflighting
  • Print or Digital Publishing
  • Troubleshooting Book Projects
Learn about placeholders for dynamic information that can automatically update throughout your document called variables..
  • Defining what variables are and how they function in ID
  • Working with Text Variables
  • Working with Image Variables
  • Working with Cross-References
  • Working with Custom Variables
Learn about creating Presentations / Pitch in InDesign while incorporating using scripts and extensions.
  • Sizing and Setup Considerations
  • A preview of dynamic presentation designs
  • Designing out from scratch or based off of templates
  • Options for adding infographics
Go further with Presentations / Pitch Decks by incorporating interactive features for digital distribution.
  • Projection / Digital Distribution / Print
  • Hyperlinking / Anchors / Custom Menus
  • Cross Application element design
  • Working with your Adobe Document Cloud
Have some creative fun by working with the exciting world of interactive features.
  • What exactly are Interactive features?
  • The compatibility guide to Interactive features
  • PDF versus EPub and beyond
  • Hyperlinks / Buttons / Menus and Navigations
  • Forms / Animations / Transitions / Video / Timing / States
  • Properly outputting interactive features
  • Troubleshooting interactive feature misfires
Learn about the Story Editor in InDesign and its ability to make editing your text and styles much easier.
  • What can you do with the Story Editor?
  • Working with InDesign’s Story Editor
  • Workflows using Story Editor
  • What is InCopy and how does it work with InDesign?
A guide to using 3rd Party and internal Artificial intelligence (AI) workflows with InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and beyond.
  • The fast-changing Hierarchy of AI in Design
  • Revisiting Firefly back end feature and future capabilities
  • 3rd Party services to InDesign workflow
  • The future is now: Translation/Auto-Reading/Templates

Our outlines are a guide to the content covered in a typical class. We may change or alter the course topics to meet the objectives of a particular class.