Getting Your Admin Staff Trained On InDesign

InDesign is a key part of the arsenal of every graphic designer. It seems to have won out as the designers preferred page layout tool. However, increasingly, InDesign is also being used by general computer users within corporations keen to save money by producing some of their corporate literature in-house. So how do you train your admin staff to use a precision design tool like InDesign?

If someone attending an InDesign training course comes from an admin background and is used to programs like Microsoft Word, the training needs to give them some insights into the world to which InDesign belongs. They need to learn something about typefaces, fonts and typographical controls. They need to understand image file formats, image manipulation and the definition of colours for print.

InDesign offers a much greater degree of accuracy than programs like Microsoft Word. It allows users to precisely determine how and where elements will print on the page. Anyone attending an InDesign training course should learn about the tools that are used to achieve this accuracy. They should be shown how to use the grid, the baseline grid and ruler guides. They should feel confident about getting elements to print out precisely where and how they should.

The terms used in InDesign often refer back to the pre-electronic age of the typographic industry and is often mystifying to the average user. It's important to explain these terms, perhaps by giving users some background information and, if possible, by making comparisons with similar features in software they already know. For example, we could compare the term "leading" in InDesign with line spacing in Microsoft Word.

Because InDesign offers so much flexibility in transforming imported images, your average user often gets carried away and ends up scaling images up or down by huge factors. It needs to be explained that scaling up or down by more than 10% or so is undesirable since this can cause artefacts to appear in the printed image.

Colour terminology can also confuse the general InDesign user. The key facts that people will need to be taught here are, firstly, the difference between the RGB and CMYK colour spaces; secondly, how the colour print job gets separated into the four different plates and, thirdly, the difference between process and spot colours.

InDesign is meant to be used to create high quality output. Regardless of their background, new users must have it drummed into them how important it is to pre-flight documents, resolve errors and then package the job ready to be sent off to a printing company. They also need to learn how to produce a high- resolution PDF file.

About The Author:

Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe InDesign training courses at their central London training centre.

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