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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?

When providing training courses for general users of InDesign, one has to do more than just explain the use of the tools and commands. As well as learning how to use program, delegates need to be given an insight into some of the basic techniques and principles of page layout, typography, colour specification and image manipulation.

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.

A typical mistake that many new InDesign users will make is to enlarge or reduce the size of images by extremely large factors. The trainer needs to point out to them that the safe zone for scaling up or down is only about 10% or so. Scaling beyond this limit can cause distortions to appear when the image is printed.

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 for creating high quality output. New users of the program must be told how vital it is to pre-flight documents, fix errors and then package the job so it can be sent off to a printing company. They should also be taught how to produce a high-resolution PDF file.

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