On a recent Indesign course, run at our Gatwick centre, most people had never used InDesign before. Some wanted to learn in order to create new documents, others on the course needed to amend documents that their design team had already created, and some were freelancers who wanted to add another string to their bow, or who wanted to be able to create stunning visual materials to help attract new customers.

At the end of the session everyone who came along told us that they found it a fun experience, and that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on some ‘live’ documents to work on.

So, is InDesign easy to use? Everyone who came to the course admitted to some unease as they were new to the tool, yet at the end all agreed that once you know the basics, and have been shown the right way of doing things that it was a great tool but it takes a bit of getting used to.

‘Having always worked on Word or something similar, the transition to InDesign was a bit of a shock. They work very differently, and this is something you have to get your head around pretty quickly.’ said one of the delegates.

There are some commonalities: certain shortcuts (copy, cut etc.) apply to both, and you generally have access to the same set of fonts. That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

But InDesign has so much more to offer. It is a lot more flexible than a word processor, and everyone seemed to really love the little things, like how you can change the spacing between individual letters to make words more readable, or how you can add boxes with fancy corners, or the fact that you can add interactive elements to your PDF.

‘That was just the stuff I learnt in the introductory session – I imagine there’s a whole world of tools, tips and tricks I’ve yet to stumble across.’ said another delegate.

In short, InDesign makes creating documents so much easier and is so much more powerful. On the course participants said that being able to adapt colours, images, and text so easily and with such flexibility is much more satisfying than just putting words down and only being able to change the font size.

When we asked whether they found the session useful they all agreed that they would recommend attending a training session.

‘It is easy to use. It’s very intuitive once you learn the basics, but I’d argue that it’s hard to learn the basics without someone being there to teach you. I had to ask a lot of questions to get my head around a few of the key concepts, and I just couldn’t have done that if I’d been learning from a video tutorial or a book,’ was the feedback from one attendee.

People on the course all said that they were glad they attended a practical training course as it helped build their confidence, and everyone went away feeling that they could put something together by themselves that will look a lot more appealing that their old documents.

If you would like to boost your document design skills, why not sign up for our 2-day InDesign course. To find out what the course covers please visit the InDesign course page.

Or if you’d like something bespoke for you and your colleagues, get in touch on 0203 9503730 via email training@underscore-group.com and we’ll be happy to put something together for you.


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