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The aim of this set of notes is to
provide some 'in-depth' guidance for students wanting to learn about Desk Top Publishing and
who are contemplating taking a course with us (Design Cad Pty. Ltd.,
PO Box 464, Marleston SA 5033). It is written with potential students of ours in mind,
but should apply to anyone contemplating training in the use of DTP
software to produce documents similar to that shown below.
Click on the image below
to open a PDF file of a 27 page newsletter designed and produced
using InDesign.
Click
on the image below to go straight to the syllabus for our online
DTP course.
In
the modern business world, the 'presentation bar' is being constantly raised. There is
a continuing call for the production of better quality documents - be they
newsletters, brochures, annual reports, charts, diagrams,
location maps, presentations etc. Desktop
publishing software enables the preparation of these high quality materials,
both in printed form and on the web.
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A menu for a restaurant menu produced using
DTP software. This example comes from Microsoft Publisher and
was produced by a student during our one-day
Microsoft Publisher course. The
restaurant sends the menu to past diners by email and it publicizes and
markets the
restaurant. The restaurant saves
substantially on distribution costs of its marketing materials. [Note that this image has been degraded for rapid
downloading on the Internet, but if
you would like to view the finished result in PDF format as
received by potential diners, click
here.] There were considerable
cost savings in working this way. Not only was the restaurant able to
market the menu via email and the Internet, but they were able to lower
printing costs and dramatically shorten the time to produce a printed version
of the menu because they did not have to deal with a commercial printer. |
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Another example - this time a student has
produced an issue of a trade
magazine. Rather than use Microsoft Publisher as above, she used Adobe's InDesign for the job. InDesign
which is a member of s the Adobe Creative
Suite, is
rapidly becoming a market leader in Desk Top Publishing and
is increasingly being adopted by commercial printers. It
competes head-to-head with Quark Express. Again, the
student was able to make substantial cost savings after she
completed the design because her company
was able to tender the print job to a number of different printing
companies and receive better pricing. |
You have, I am sure, seen some terrible publishing efforts.
It is not uncommon to see word
processors such as Microsoft Word, Computer Aided Design software such as AutoCAD or even
spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel, being used to produce complex documents. The results are poor - word processors are good for creating and manipulating text, CAD is good
for generating technical drawings, and Excel is great for manipulating
numbers, but none of them are designed to be a page layout (documentation) tool.
The 'take home' lesson is
- "If you want to produce complex documents and want them to look
good, you need to
learn to use Desk Top Publishing software."
Be aware though that
learning to use DTP software is not a trivial task.
It is useful to know
that there is quite a range of desk top publishing software on the
market. Products include:
Each has particular
advantages and disadvantages over the other. The choice will be made on a number of factors - price, ease of use
and what
others in your supply chain are using.
It is a simplistic
view, but if you want to produce straightforward newsletters, menus, flyers
etc. in-house, then Microsoft Publisher is a good choice. However, if you want to produce high
quality documents ready for commercial printing and produce lightweight
PDF versions for your web sites, then Adobe's InDesign is a much better choice.
Note that although InDesign is a top end DTP tool,
if
you want to work closely with particular commercial printers who insist
that you use Quark Express, you will need to learn it. Finally, if you want to produce a book with 20
chapters in it, with lots of cross referenced figures and have those
figures automatically update when you add extra material, then InDesign
is the stand out candidate.
Most certainly, yes. It
is important to realize that InDesign and its cohorts are page assembly
tools. In an ideal world, the store, figures and graphic art should all
be complete before you begin to lay out a page. Unlike other software
applications which tend to be 'stand alone', you will certainly need to learn to use
extra tools to successfully produce publications. More importantly,
you also need to
learn to know when to use a particular tool.
The list below summarizes the
additional software tools
(computer programs) that we contend are required for successful DTP work. This applies
whether the chosen Desk Top Publishing tool is InDesign, Publisher, Quark Express or FrameMaker.
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You need experience with an image editor to enable you to
adjust and incorporate photographs into your document. We suggest
that you learn to use one of Jasc
PaintShop Pro, Gimp or Adobe Photoshop. You may also need to learn to use some type of image library
management tool so that you can file your photos and retrieve suitable
images in your library when required.
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At some stage, you will need to
learn to use a 'line drawing' or vector based
graphics program if you wish to produce your own art work such as logos,
illustrative graphics, flow charts etc. We suggest that you learn to
use at least one of Adobe
Illustrator,
dCAD, Microsoft Visio, Corel Draw,
IntelliCAD,
Autodesk AutoCAD, GardenCAD etc.
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If there is a need to turn
printed material into digital form for incorporation into your
document you will need to learn to use a flat bed or drum scanner
and possibly the software supplied with it.
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A PDF editor/writer (such
as Adobe
Acrobat, CutePDF or PDFWriter) to produce a PDF file of your work. You
will need to
learn to make high quality PDF files for your commercial printer and
low quality PDF files for to distribution across the Internet. In
our view, Adobe Acrobat is the tool of choice although the built in
PDF writing tools in InDesign are now very good..
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A text editor (such as Microsoft
Word) to create the 'stories' that will be placed on the page(s)
that you are assembling with your DTP software. You should develop
considerable expertise in Word and be familiar with the use of named
styles to control layout. InDesign contains an in-built text editor
and we strongly encourage its use.
So, in summary, you need to learn to use a suite
of software tools for DTP, but not all are required immediately.
You first step in determining a
suitable training program for
your needs should be to make sure that you understand what it is
that you want to achieve i.e. you need to define your aims at the
outset.
There are many possible
scenarios:
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You may simply want to know what
DTP programs can do
for your own interest. If that is the case, then read some of the more general articles on
DTP in the support
section of this web site. Alternatively, visit our online learning
site: http://www.softwaretutor.designcad.com.au and play some of the sample modules and
instructional movies associated with InDesign and Publisher on that site.
No cost is involved there.
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Alternatively, you might be
interested in Desk Top Publishing because you have been asked to manage a team of
staff involved in a major DTP project, but not necessarily want to become DTP proficient yourself. If so,
we suggest that you enrol in one of our online introductory DTP courses - Introduction to InDesign
or Introduction to Publisher. These cost $75.00 each.
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A sample DTP document - a
chapter from a book produced using InDesign. Note the large
number of palettes in the InDesign environment. It does take
time to learn to use them effectively. |
The courses
listed above are suitable for those who
want to know what DTP is all about. They are also suitable as a first step for those who might be
contemplating some serious DTP work themselves.
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Finally, after you have
taken one of these introductory courses, you may have
decided that you want to acquire professional DTP skills and
earn at least part of your income by producing quality documentation. We
suggest that you take
the Introduction to InDesign course
discussed above, confirm that you like our
learning system and
then enrol in our Advanced InDesign course, plus Photoshop
1 and Photoshop 2, followed by Illustrator,
then Acrobat
- completing a series of
courses which lead to DTP competency.*
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Please note
that we find it extremely difficult to assist those who want to enrol in
our Advanced InDesign course, when they have not taken the 'Introduction
to InDesign course' with us. We like our 'Advanced' InDesign
course to be workshop based so that we focus on some of your own
materials.
*This latter step is a major commitment of time and effort and should not
be entered into lightly. You do need to allocate
considerable time if you choose this option in addition to the formal
course instruction. We estimate >100 hours practicing skills that we
have taught you.
We recommend a graded
approach to the implementation of DTP in your office. Consider a scenario
where you have decided to bring the production of an annual report 'in
house' rather than pay a commercial printer to lay the document out
and then print it.
Step 1. Send a
staff member on a introductory DTP course.
Step 2. Get
feedback from the staff member. Do they feel that they can mange your DTP jobs
- producing the regular newsletter, annual report, quarterly magazine etc.? If yes:
Step 3. Enrol for
an advanced DTP course, but make a requirement that your staff member
produces a copy of (say) last years annual report (you should have the original
'stories' and images so this should be quite straightforward). Produce a
complete copy of last years report in PDF format.
Step 4. Take the
PDF file to a copy center and produce one copy of last years report. Take
it to management and make sure that the standard of presentation is
adequate for the organization.
Now you are ready to
produce this year's annual report! There should be no surprises as your
staff
grapple with the task.
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If you are thinking
about enrolling on one of our courses via distance learning, we would like you to try out a
one of the sample courses at our online learning web site:
http://www.softwaretutor.designcad.com.au
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Play at
least one of our sample movies embedded within the course. Our courses contain many
instructional movies and we want to be
reassured that your equipment works with the movies that we make to
illustrate the use of DTP commands.
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Make sure that you have a copy of
suitable DTP software loaded and running properly on your computer.
Please ensure that InDesign or Publisher is loaded before ordering a course. If you do not want to
purchase the software immediately, you can download a
trial version of InDesign from the Adobe web site. (http://www.adobe.com).
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