Trainer Guide: Teaching Guide: Adobe InDesign

STS Introduction

1. Go through the STS Workshop Slideshow for Premiere:
   • Give the STS Intro
   • Have students Sign-In
   • Ensure everyone has downloaded the class files
   • Go over the Land Acknowledgement
   • Provide an overview of the topics to be covered today and what InDesign is best used for: Layout (NOT editing photos or creating detailed graphics – that’s what Photoshop and Illustrator is for)
     • Remind students that InDesign is meant to be a place for you to bring together existing media to create a new project from
   • Show final practice project they will be creating

New Project & InDesign Interface

2. Open Adobe InDesign
   • Create a New Project
     • Go over all the Preset Details settings
       • Dimensions: 8×11.5 Inches
       • Orientation: Portrait
       • Check “Facing pages”Facing Pages makes left and right pages face each other in a double-page spread, generally for print materials like magazines and books. Deselecting this option will allow each page to stand alone, such as when you’re designing flyers or posters.
       • Pages: 1 (we will add more later)Number of Pages specifies how many pages the document will start out with. You can always add additional pages once the document is created.
       • Start # 1Start Page # is useful for page numbering. It defaults to 1. If you prefer the page numbering to start on 692, for example, you can do so by typing the numerical value in this section.
       • Columns: 1
       • Margins: .5 for all
       • Bleed and Slug: 0 for all
3. Overview of InDesign Interface
   • Mention the default workplace is “Essentials”
     • Show students how to change workplace – mention that Essential Classic is often preferred by folks who used InDesign years ago
     • Show how to reset workspace in case things move around
   • Introduce the various panels we see right away
     • Tools Panel
       • We will only be using the 4 most common tools for this workshop
       • A white triangle means there are more tools if you hold down your click
     • Properties Panel (the most helpful panel!)
       • Mention that contents within this panel changes depending on what you are selected on
       • If selected on the document itself, this is where you can add Rulers, Grids, Guidelines
     • Pages
       • Explain the difference between project pages vs. Parent Pages
       • Mention that Parent Pages are most helpful for:
         • Projects with 10+ pages (saves time and energy)
         • Adding elements that are repetitive within our project (i.e page numbers, project titles)
   • Explain the Windows menu item in case students don’t see an existing panel or need to bring up another panel/window
4. Navigation
   1. Zooming in and out
      • Zoom in/out to size of document (Command 0 or Control 0)
   2. Panning (with spacebar)

Adding More Pages

5. Add 2 more pages
6. Also show how to delete pages, but keep 2 pages for class practice project 

Adding Frames and Text Boxes

7. Remind students what the final practice project looks like (from the slideshow)
8. Go back to InDesign, and explain the Frame Tool (mention it’s like having a picture frame that is separate from the picture inside; they are two different things)
   • Create the 3 frames seen on the practice project example
   • Show how to import an Image from the Properties Panel
     • Move image within frame
     • Manually resize image within frame
     • Manually resize frame
     • From Properties Panel, show the Frame Fitting options for quicker rescaling
       • Show how to resize frame and image together (check “Auto-Fit” box within Properties Panel

Type, Appearance, and Paragraph Styles

9. Remind students what the final practice project looks like (from the slideshow)
10. Have students find their downloaded Class Files folder
    • Open spread_text.txt file
    • Copy the text
11. Go back to InDesign, explain the Type Tool
    • Create a text box 2/3 of the way down page 2
    • Paste the text
    • Note that not all the text is present (red box with plus sign at the corner of the text box indicates this) – Show overflow feature (has to be on selection tool)
      1. Create a new threaded text box on the right page to show rest of text
    • Change text box column number to 2
12. Show students the “W” keyboard shortcut for Print Preview (note: you need to be out of a text box for this to work)
13. Edit the Appearance and Character of type:
    • Change the font, size, color, spacing, etc. 
    • Show how to de-hyphenate (under Paragraph settings in Properties Panel)
    • Explain that many more options can be applied via the Properties Panel

Give students time to practice editing the appearance of the type to their project and go around the room to answer questions

14. Explain what Paragraph Styles are (emphasize this is MOST helpful for InDesign projects with many pages)
    • Create a new Paragraph Style for the first heading after first line of text
    • Apply new Heading 1 Paragraph Style to other headings in the text
    • Edit the new Paragraph Style and show how to Redefine Style

Give students time to practice adding paragraph styles to their project. Also pull up the final practice project on the screen and ask students to try to add a new text box with the italicized quote (first line of the copied text) once they are done. While students work, go around the room to answer questions

14. Show students how to italicize text manually via the Character settings in the Properties Panel (expand settings to see more options)

More Practice with the Cover Page

16. Give students time to try to figure out how to make the cover page on their own
17. After a few minutes, show how to make the cover page
18. Explain the importance of dragging a text box outside of the rectangle shape if it is selected. Otherwise, a text box will be created from the selected shape.

Parent Pages

19. Remind students what Parent Pages are typically used for (again, emphasize this is most helpful for longer InDesign documents)
    • Explain that Parent Page A is the default for all project pages
    • Show how to apply another Parent Page to the project pages
20. Add page numbers on a Parent Page
21. Add more pages to show how it appears on all the pages

Additional Edits (If Time)

22. Within the Properties Panel…
    • Text Wrap options for images over text
    • Quick Actions for selected Frames
      • Arrange
      • Embed
    • Quick Actions for selected Text Boxes
      • Convert Shape
      • Fill with Placeholder Text
    • Appearance 
      • Corner options
      • Fx options

Saving, Exporting, and Packaging

23. Begin by explaining Save As… and remind students:
    • To make sure they save their project to a folder they can find later
    • To save repeatedly by going to File > Save or Command S or Control S
24. Exporting
    • Navigate to the Export section of InDesign
    • Ensure the project name and location are good
    • Explain the different formats (Adobe PDF Print and Adobe PDF Interactive are the most common)
25. Packaging
    • Explain that best practice for working on an InDesign project is to do so from one computer for the entire project
    • Explain why packaging is essential if students will be working from multiple computers (files are only being referenced in an InDesign project, rather than automatically embedded)
    • Mention that you could also Embed all images manually, but this may be tedious work if you are working on a very large project.
    • Show the packaging process

Wrap Up

26. Ask students if they have any further questions
27. Go back to the STS slideshow
    • Remind students about our Office Hours and 1-on-1 services
    • Request students fill out an evaluation before they leave
    • Thank students for attending!