InDesign Competency

Level 1

Demonstrate skill with:

Navigation and layout

  • Selection tool vs. direct selection tool
  • Adding, removing, adjusting ruler guides
  • Zoom tool and zoom/navigation shortcuts
  • Picas and points vs. inches
  • Place command
  • Insert, delete, move pages (pages panel)
  • Columns, margins, bleed and slug (and explain these last two)

Text

  • Type tool
  • Text wrap
  • Fixing overset text
  • Paragraph styles and text formatting (font, color, justification, spacing, tabs, etc.)
  • “Based on” option

Graphics

  • Placing graphics
  • Transforming graphics
  • Fitting options for graphics

Other

  • Overprint preview and “W” keyboard shortcut
  • Fixing missing links
  • Shape tools
  • Line tool
  • Stroke and fill options
  • Importing, creating, organizing color swatches
  • Eyedropper tool
  • Color theme tool
  • Saving and exporting, packaging (why should you almost always use “package”?)

Level 2

Demonstrate skill with:

Text

  • Threading text frames
  • Autoflow (3 kinds, when to use each)
  • Automatic page numbers
  • Spell-check
  • Find/change
  • Drop caps
  • Split/span columns
  • Creating columns without guides
  • Tracking/kerning/leading
  • Text wrap with “alpha channel”
  • Importing from word using same style names

Graphics

  • Clipping masks
  • Autofit

Shapes/lines

  • Arrow key shortcuts for the polygon tool
  • Advanced stroke panel options like custom dashed lines, corners, endpoints, etc.

Pages

  • Master pages
  • Overriding master page items
  • Layers

Other

  • Alt, or alt-shift for easy duplicate and keep in line
  • Align, distribute, group
  • Understand the different kinds of frames in InDesign
  • Effects panel
  • Object styles
  • Saving for older versions of InDesign
  • Tables of Contents

Level 3

Learn 15 new tools or panels. Learn whichever tools interest you most.

Recommended tools:

  • Story editor
  • Type on a path
  • Using sections in InDesign
  • Page tool
  • Creating and formatting tables
    • Adjusting rows and columns
    • Formatting cells
    • Placing graphics in cells
    • Importing from Excel

Other optional tools:

  • Placeholder text
  • Setting hyphenation rules, other rules for text editing
  • Character styles
  • Making interactive documents like clickable PDFs
  • Automating bullets and numbers
  • Gap tool
  • Scissors tool
  • Page tool
  • Footnotes
  • Content collector/placer tool (I’m not sure what this is good for, but if you learn it and find a good reason to use it, let me know!)
  • Pen tool
  • Pencil tool
  • Free-transform tool (and the tools underneath it)
  • Shear tool
  • Gradient swatch tool
  • Gradient feather tool
  • Measure tool
  • “Transform again” options

Be able to explain the following:

  • What Pantone colors are and why they are helpful
  • What the difference is between CMYK and RGB and when/why to use each
  • What InDesign does better than either Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, or PowerPoint, and what types of things InDesign is not very good at

Suggested projects:

This competency project is intended to be flexible. Unfortunately, that may leave some feeling directionless or even lost at the start. If that’s you, here are some ideas for projects which will use several of the required tools and hopefully be fun and presentable as well! The files we use in class are another great resource, as they are specifically designed for practicing these tools. Youtube and Lynda tutorials for these tools also have great project ideas, often with practice files included.

  • Create a flier for an event
  • Create an original poster for your favorite movie
  • Create a magazine including front cover, table of contents, and an article or two
  • Re-design your resume in InDesign! (everyone should do this anyway)
  • Do a layout for a scientific article as if it were going to be published in a print journal. Include tables, figures, bibliography, etc. to get some of that advanced practice in!
  • Create a newspaper
  • Create a cool new infographic (make one better than my shark example and we’ll use it for the class!)
  • Design some cool business cards
  • Create a cool calendar with pictures of your dog (or your roommates or your spouse or nature or something).
  • Design a book cover (or layout a whole book if you just really love InDesign and you want to spend hours and hours and hours on this project… )
  • Make thank-you cards, wedding announcements, or any other kind of card
  • Make a brochure for your favorite vacay spot