A month or so ago we got a shiny iMac to use in our department to facilitate picking up print ads and creating the video ads for the site. This puppy’s fully loaded with software that the previous manager (yes, that would be me) was too cheap to splurge on.
What catches my eye the most is Adobe InDesign CS3. I have no print design background at all, and I’d love to learn. However, my foundation is in pixels and RGB, not picas and CMYK.
I want to start spending 2 hours a weekend at work - on my own time - learning this software. I’m looking for a strong tutorial-based book. Know of any?
Bonus points if you can point me to a book/site where I can learn some print design fundamentals.
Thanks!
Posted at: 8:00 am in General, Kim v. 3.0, Work
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February 7th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Hi. Check out the loads of tutorials on You Tube. Even better than a book sometimes. I’ve been using this to help out on my Photoshop skills. Handy.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I’ve learned quite a bit from the Visual Quickstart Guide series (Peachpit Press). I had the JavaScript and HTML books and although I don’t use either in my job capacity, the books definitely expanded my knowledge.
And being that we do (Mac-based) publishing at my job, you can’t swing a cat and not hit a VQG.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:04 am
http://www.cmykmag.com/
The best thing however is to throw the mac down a flight of stairs.
As far as print design, get a Sunday paper, and start clipping out what looks good to you in the sales papers.
After you get a few Sundays down, look at that stuff and decide for yourself what sells.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hi Kim, I found my way here through Sharon’s site and I hope you don’t mind the comment.
I used to do print and design for a long time and had to mull my way through InDesign myself…it’s a little slowgoing at first but once you understand the intention behind Adobe with this software you really start to cruise!
Although there are many books to choose from believe it or not the manual is the most straight foward learning you can get short of “howto” books which doesn’t really teach you anything. Also if you guys are using CS2 or CS3 see whether or not you are eligible for the online/CD traingin they offer to customers. When we bought CS2 we had to buy multiple keys and in turn we had som many rescources available. There are also 2 good site you can check out:
http://www.indesignsecrets.com
http://www.photoshopcafe.com
Photoshopcafe primarily deals with PSD and Dreamweaver but also contains a lot of info for those trying their hand at the Vector Art world…..if you goto the Forums section scroll down to “The Panel”…there you will see a link for posts about InDesign and Quark.
Hope this helps and Good Luck!