Product Description

In the real world, page layout projects don’t come with directions, and the "recipe book" approach of most books does little to prepare designers for the demands of a highly competitive industry. Exploring InDesign® CS takes a different approach. With an emphasis on typography and critical thinking, the book transforms the novice into a professional typesetter — one who is grounded in industry-standard design principles. In addition to gaining professional proficiency with Adobe® InDesign CS, users learn to begin a project while visualizing the end design, to identify the project pitfalls and challenges, and to independently strategize the best production sequence. Chapters and projects are carefully ordered to move readers from the tools palette to multiple master pages, with each chapter building upon the skills presented in the previous chapter. Supplemental projects require users to identify production steps and apply the necessary skills, reinforcing key concepts and teaching how to work independently in document construction. Similar to the industry, the emphasis throughout the book is on productivity, including preplanning and utilizing keyboard shortcuts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1241095 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Terry Rydberg is an instructor at Waukesha County Technical College.

Customer Reviews

Exploring Indesign CS
I used the book Exploring InDesign CS for a Desktop Publishing class, where I was taking it as an independent study. First of all, this is my second copy of the book, and the pages are literally falling out of it. I have had to clip the pages together in order to keep the pages from being misplaced.

Secondly, the book has some issues as far as the projects are concerned. Each chapter leads you through an assigment, and then there are projects at the end of each chapter. It seems, many times, the author adds things to the projects that have not been practiced in the chapter. It was extremely frustrating. Some of the assignments are flawed, and cannot be completed according to her specifications.
It also would have been helpful if she had more pictures relating to the specific activities and assignments.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Full of problems
This book seems to be a good beginning tool for those not familiar at all with InDesign or who want to brush up on their skills. I purchased this book for a college course in desktop publishing and was very skeptical. I am majoring in communication design, so for the last four years I've been using InDesign. The book wasn't of much help for someone like myself who's been using the software for sometime. Therefore I don't recommend the book for anyone who's familiar with InDesign.

The CD that accompanies the book is a great learning tool (meaning it's good if you've never used InDesign). However it is filled with errors. I've encountered several errors in the exercises that make it very difficult for beginners. I'm sure there's a better book on the market that will teach InDesign in a more effective, error free way.

So, to conclude... look for a different book. This one is full of way too many irritating errors.

InDesign CS.....creative suite....cool stuff
It's a good book to work (there are many exercises to practice what one is reading about, and one has to have that when one is learning) and the author pushes smart use of the software. I love how it is written and it's actually entertaining at times. ;-) I am concerned about the included CD though..... typos, as if it was not properly "test driven" before production. So sad. Otherwise I'm very pleased with it. We are using it as our primary text book in the InDesign desktop publishing class at the local community college. I like it a lot.