JOHN NEWTONS IN DESIGN COURSE

These sessions are made by john newton who is a technical demonstrator at the university, today will be a basic introduction to InDesign. John is a Graphic designer with skills in photoshop, illustrator InDesign, printing, and many more. This session will be covering document setup workspace set up layers grids and many more things. By doing this session I hope I can improve on the way I set up my documents to make my future work more consistent and set up times reduced with the skills I've gained. However, I have used InDesign previously on my foundation year and First-year so this will be more of a refresher to me.

First, john goes over the different options for setting up their premade options that adobe provides or make your own custom ones and saved ones. we generally use MM as a standard for most documents unless you're doing something specific.

We were shown Document Set-Up with this guide page

These were the setting that I used while referring to the original ones I chose to use these as although they were preset they were still very good so I felt no need to change them.

This was the result of those settings as you can see there are 4 columns each with a 5mm gutter just how john has shown.

Next going to widow type and tables I selected these options which will be used later

NEXT MASTER PAGES

Essentially the master page is like a template to be used on all the other pages, master pages sit in their own individual page space. John goes over commands such and holding down alt while zooming to change from in to out

to create the master page we were asked to make a text box which we would then insert a special character with a current page marker then within the box after the special character we would then type/inserting another character which is the last page number so that then on each page there is a number and if you add or delete a page it can change with those actions this will be very useful for people to navigate my portfolio.

next, we were shown to create additional master pages, this is my master B page and then dragged over a colored box to create a background colour and then apply this master to all our pages all without altering the individual pages themself which I had never thought to do so In future I will defiantly be apply this method to my work, I suppose you can teach an old dog new tricks haha.

LAYERS SECTION

I am very familiar with the layers part of adobe due to my frequent use of other adobe products such as photoshop. the layers function serves as a way to organise content with the document easily. send things in front or behind without changing their arrangement.

GRIDS AND GUIDES SECTION

following the guide, I created this simple grid and guide as my portfolio is mainly to display just images of my work, I think keeping it simple would be best.

Above is an example of more complicated grids you could use depending on the type of work you would be using InDesign for. These grids allow for more options and much more flexibility. This level of complexity is something I have never seen before and quite honestly I feel intimidated by them as I can't imagine anything I would ever use them for and honestly I don't think I will end up using them but being aware of the existence of them is good to know.

A WORKSPACE FOR TYPOGRAPHY SECTION

following his guide I created this template for my Portfolio cover using the type tools how showed I will most likely not use this style for my final portfolio however it was a very insightful tutorial on how to set one up.

Now finishing this session I'm pleasantly surprised at all of the little tips and knowledge I have gained from this I now feel as though I can start my portfolio in good strides and will be applying what I have learned. I never imagined the difference the use of gutter and columns could make to the organization of my work.