Ever heard of InDesign? It’s a program from Adobe that is great for making layouts for magazines, books, leaflets or even a business card. Top companies use InDesign and the rest of Adobe’s creative suite to make the polished product we see. So I decided to take a class to understand how it all works.

I started with a basic workshop and discovered a program that takes some of the best things in life. Here’s what I learnt:

• Customize your workspace. This is something that can be applied to any workspace. But the InDesign workspace makes it easy. You can even save which tools are in your sidebar, so you can have a different setup for different projects in an instant.
• There are lots of ways to do everything. The functionality of the program makes it easy to find what you are looking for since there are so many ways to do everything. It’s a good reminder that one way is not always the best way.
• Minalism. Dropping some extra weight can make things run faster. This program good uses this idea when it comes to resolution. By automatically setting things to a lower resolution the program can run faster while you are working.
• The preflight check. Don’t send your precious work out with unnoticed errors. This program has a feature called the preflight check to point out things you might have missed. Things such as text that is hidden because it is too long for the space.

Think you want to give it a try. InDesign is expensive, but you can get a free trial from Adobe’s website so you can play with it first. If you don’t have any experience a class is definitely a great way to start. Learn the basics or go back to discover some hidden features.