InDesign training: Is online effective?

Hi Guy:

I really do need to learn the mechanical aspects of InDesign. But it sounds like even a two-day one-on-one training will only get me started with the basics and I'll have to continue learning with more online training and working from books and videos myself.

I'm one of the ACIs on David's list—and a career InDesign trainer—and I totally agree with this statement.

My suggestion is to attend a 2-day training class with one of us on this thread (an online interactive class or an in-person class), or with your local ACI, or with someone else you find elsewhere who is knowledgable and expereienced, but yes, that will just be the beginning. Once you have a solid foundation, continuing to learn on your own becomes so much easier. As previously mentioned, many of us offer hourly consulting options for a fee, but you can always ask your questions here as well. We are happy to help.

~Barb Binder

As others have said, it takes a lot more than just a 2-day or semester-long course in InDesign to learn what you need for a career in graphic arts.

When I headed up the graphic design curriculum of a local university's summer institute for publishing, we had students for 16 hours  per week (four 4-hour classes per week) for 8 weeks (128 hours of instruction). They all started as novices and were ready for full-time jobs at the end of the program.

Topics included:

• Hands-on instruction in InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator (just the mechanics of using these programs).
• Graphic design theory for publications, PR, and advertising.
• Preparing graphics and files for print and digital.
• Conceptionalizing ideas, developing a design, critiquing the concept, and executing the final product.
• Working with editors and clients.

Comparison: if you took a 2-day workshop in MS Word, would you be a qualified journalist or editor? One thing most editors do is naively think that design and production is all mechanical; Just learn what buttons to click and voila! Instant design!

I highly recommend taking a semester-long course at your local community college where  you have the chance to get critiques and suggestions from other students and the instructor, as well as some of the tangential ideas that go beyond the mechanics of using InDesign. If you like what you're doing, you can continue with the college's advanced course next semester.

I teach live online classes in specific topics for publishing. I would never recommend learning InDesign and the basics of graphic/publishing through any kind of online learning. You'll miss a lot!

There are generally two types of online training: canned recordings and custom, live instruction. (I'm partial to the latter.) For live training, I would start looking at an Adobe Certifed Instructor but also check out their background to make sure it covers the areas you are interested in. 

Here is a list of ACIs, which I pre-filtered to the USA (you can change it if needed):

https://learning.adobe.com/partner-finder.html#p=1?products=InDesign&partnerType=Certified%20Instructor&country=USA

I've been using InDesign for 20 years and I still learn new things. There's no way to tell you what will work better for you as far as learning the application goes and there's no substitute for making mistakes and learning from them.

I offer online Q&A sessions which are perfect for people that have read books or gone through tutorials and still have a few nagging issues that haven't been address. Send me a private message if you're interested.

You won't learn these skills in a couple of days, whatever the quality (and cost) of the course. But it can be done, but be prepared to take your time.  You need to learn Photoshop as well as InDesign. To learn I suggest you use a combination of online video courses (e.g.Linkedin Learning; BringYourOwnLaptop); Books (e.g. InDesign Classroom in a Book and Photoshop Classroom in a Book) and maybe a local college may have classes. And use these friendly Forums for advice about particular isssues.

You might be able to produce some artwork for local charities and non-profits free-of-charge, which will give you some practice in using the applications, once you've learnt them a bit.