InDesign Workshop.

A morning workshop session- learning the basics of Adobe InDesign with technician tutor, Mike Flowers.

A short introduction and step-by-step instructions of the processes...

-Organise information and lyaout for page griding at new document opening.

-The measurements you choose will be printed- the trimmed and printed size.

-Bleed and Slug: Guides on the page which assist you with your layout. 

-Specify a particular spacing between colums through 'gutters' and negative space 'margins'.

-Standard bleed amount is 3mm in commercial printing.

-Slug: Used to define an area or space outside of the page (printer marks are printed with the slug crosshairs and printing colours used, etc.)

-Tick the facing pages box if you are creating a book or a booklet. Pages inside= failing pages. Used also for double-sided printing.

-Red line around page- 3mm bleed.

-Purple line around page- margin.

-Pages tab on right-hand-side palette allows a thumbnail preview of all of your content, and over a number of pages. 

ASPECTS OR INFORMATION TO WORK WITH IN INDESIGN...

1. Text/Type.

2. Image.

3. Grid.

4. Colour.

5. Shape/Lines.

-Drag horizontal guides down to the page, or press 'command' + 'R'- pop up box will appear and show you distance from the top of the page.

-Every piece of information in InDesign has to be contained within a frame.

-Create a frame for text by clicking on page and dragging a box.

-Type menu- Fill with placeholder text- This will fill so you can easily see a bulk of text- formatting, typeface, etc.

-In the Type header bar, you will be able to manipulate kerning, leading, pt size, etc.

-Top left-hand corner, paragraph formatting controls- controlling an entire paragraph as oppossed to individual characters.

-By clicking on the bottom right-hand box of the frame, you can make another text frame- decrease original text frame size to create an automatic flow from one frame to another.

-Press 'W' to go from layout to preview mode- hides all margins- an accurate presentation of how it will appear in print.

IMAGES

-Consider your file format- save as photoshop or to a TIFF file- DON'T use a JPEG- it is a COMPRESSED file (good for the web, however)- therefore, comprimises the quality.

-COLOUR MODE- CMYK or GREYSCALE.

-Resolution- working for print- 300 DPI.

-WORK IN ACTUAL SIZE- make your image the page size+bleed size measurements (the size you will need it on the InDesign page).

ILLUSTRATOR

Consider:

1. File format: AI (Illustrator file)

2. Colour mode: CMYK (default)

-Illustrator doesn't have resolutions- made up of vectors, not pixels. 

-Don't need to worry about ACTUAL SIZE- Can re-scale in InDesign as it's scale doesn't affect it's quality.

SAVING FILES

-(When at Uni) Make a new file in user work- save as 'layout number one' (save your InDesign file). Ensure all of your images you are going to use are within this file- need to be very organised as multiple files are used at once.

-Images also need to be contained within a frame. Rectangle frame tool- 9th tool down on the toolbar.

-FILE>PLACE>Command+D>Navigate to where your images are stored, drop in.

-Click on the circle in the centre of your page to re-position.

-The image naturally looks of poor quality on screen- InDesign retrieves the original image from Photoshop/Illustrator to a high resolution (TRUST THIS!) Save all of your images in the same folder to make this process easier for InDesign.

-'Links' pallette tab will give you info about the images you have used, where to find it, etc. ALWAYS KEEP THE ORIGINAL- If you don't, it may print in a low resolution.

-VIEW>DISPLAY PERFORMANCE>HIGH QUALITY DISPLAY (to preview print-like quality).

-To place image onto the page you can also go straight to file>place (you will see a thumbnail attached to mouse pointer). InDesign will instantly add the frame around this.

COLOUR

-All colour has to be houses within a frame.

-Select swatches to add fill and stroke colours.

-Swatch pallette- drop down tab>new colour swatch.

Filling colums with placeholder text to get a feel for layout and griding...

The dimensions of the DPS for the current brief...will be working with this a great deal in the following weeks, and creating thumbnail sketches, as well as posting research onto my design context blog to back-up my ideas and layout plans.

A quick mock-up to demonstrate the various processes- text box and grid formatting, importing images, and creating frames for future images.

...And a splash of Beth's favourite colour (purely for demonstration purposes!).

My first draft page (complete with images) in preview mode- over a series of pages.

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS NOTES:

-PICA unit of type measurement- old standard measurement in InDesign, but no longer particularly relevant. 

12pt in a pica, 6 picas in an inch.

-FOR BRIEF: DPS landscape, A3 stock, 237mmx380mm (2cm bleed).

-YOU DON'T CREATE ANYTHING NEW IN INDESIGN- IT'S FOR ARRANGEMENT OF PREVIOUSLY IMPORTED TEXT/IMAGE.